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Title: Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, "Electrostatics" to "Engis"

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THE ENCYCLOPÆDIA BRITANNICA

A DICTIONARY OF ARTS, SCIENCES,
LITERATURE AND GENERAL
INFORMATION
ELEVENTH EDITION

VOLUME IX SLICE III

Electrostatics to Engis

Articles in This Slice

ELECTROSTATICS ELTVILLE
ELECTROTHERAPEUTICS ELTZ
ELECTROTYPING ELVAS
ELECTRUM, ELECTRON ELVEY, SIR GEORGE JOB
ELEGIT ELVIRA, SYNOD OF
ELEGY EL WAD
ELEMENT ELWOOD
ELEMI ELY, RICHARD THEODORE

ELEPHANT ELY
ELEPHANTA ISLE ELYOT, SIR THOMAS
ELEPHANTIASIS ELYRIA
ELEPHANT’S-FOOT ELYSIUM
ELETS ELZE, KARL
ELEUSIS ELZEVIR
ELEUTHERIUS EMANATION
ELEUTHEROPOLIS EMANUEL I.
ELEVATORS EMBALMING
ELF EMBANKMENT
ELGAR, SIR EDWARD EMBARGO
ELGIN (Illinois, U.S.A.) EMBASSY
ELGIN (Scotland) EMBER DAYS and EMBER WEEKS
ELGIN AND KINCARDINE, EARLS EMBEZZLEMENT
OF
ELGINSHIRE EMBLEM
ELGON EMBLEMENTS
ELI EMBOSSING
ELIAS EMBRACERY
ELIAS, JOHN EMBRASURE
ELIAS LEVITA EMBROIDERY
ELIE EMBRUN
ÉLIE DE BEAUMONT, JEAN EMBRYOLOGY
BAPTISTE ARMAND LOUIS
LÉONCE
ELIJAH EMDEN
ELIJAH WILNA EMERALD
ELIOT, CHARLES WILLIAM ÉMERIC-DAVID, TOUSSAINT-
BERNARD
ELIOT, GEORGE EMERITUS
ELIOT, SIR JOHN EMERSON, RALPH WALDO
ELIOT, JOHN EMERSON, WILLIAM
ELIS (district of Greece) EMERY

ELIS (city of Greece) EMETICS
ELIS, PHILOSOPHICAL SCHOOL OF EMEU
ELISAVETGRAD EMIGRATION
ELISAVETPOL (government of Russia) EMILIA
ELISAVETPOL (town of Russia) EMINENCE
ELISHA EMINENT DOMAIN
ELISHA BEN ABUYAH EMINESCU, MICHAIL
ELIXIR EMIN PASHA
ELIZABETH (queen of England) EMLYN, THOMAS
ELIZABETH [PETROVNA] EMMANUEL
ELIZABETH [AMÉLIE EUGÉNIE] EMMANUEL PHILIBERT
ELIZABETH (consort of Frederick V.) EMMAUS
ELIZABETH [PAULINE ELIZABETH EMMENDINGEN
OTTILIE LOUISE]
ELIZABETH (daughter of Charles I.) EMMERICH
ELIZABETH (Marie Hélène of France) EMMET, ROBERT
ELIZABETH, SAINT EMMET, THOMAS ADDIS
ELIZABETH (New Jersey, U.S.A.) EMMETT, DANIEL DECATUR
ELIZABETHAN STYLE EMMITSBURG
ELIZABETH CITY EMMIUS, UBBO
ELK EMMONS, EBENEZER
ELKHART EMMONS, NATHANAEL
ELKINGTON, GEORGE RICHARDS EMPEDOCLES
ELLA EMPEROR
ELLAND EMPHYSEMA
ELLENBOROUGH, EDWARD LAW EMPIRE
(English judge)
ELLENBOROUGH, EDWARD LAW EMPIRICISM
(Earl)
ELLERY, WILLIAM EMPLOYERS’ LIABILITY, and
WORKMEN’S COMPENSATION
ELLESMERE, FRANCIS EGERTON EMPOLI
ELLESMERE (town in England) EMPORIA

ELLICE (LAGOON) ISLANDS EMPORIUM
ELLICHPUR EMPSON, SIR RICHARD
ELLIOTSON, JOHN EMPYEMA
ELLIOTT, EBENEZER EMPYREAN
ELLIPSE EMS (river of Germany)
ELLIPSOID EMS (town of Germany)
ELLIPTICITY EMSER, JEROME
ELLIS, ALEXANDER JOHN ENAMEL
ELLIS, GEORGE ENCAENIA
ELLIS, SIR HENRY ENCAUSTIC PAINTING
ELLIS, ROBINSON ENCEINTE
ELLIS, WILLIAM ENCINA, JUAN DEL
ELLISTON, ROBERT WILLIAM ENCKE, JOHANN FRANZ
ELLORA ENCLAVE
ELLORE ENCOIGNURE
ELLSWORTH, OLIVER ENCYCLICAL
ELLSWORTH ENCYCLOPAEDIA
ELLWANGEN ENDECOTT, JOHN
ELLWOOD, THOMAS ENDIVE
ELM ENDOEUS
ELMACIN, GEORGE ENDOGAMY
ELMALI ENDOR
ELMES, HARVEY LONSDALE ENDOSPORA
ELMES, JAMES ENDYMION
ELMHAM, THOMAS ENERGETICS
ELMINA ENERGICI
ELMIRA ENERGY
ELMSHORN ENFANTIN, BARTHÉLEMY
PROSPER
ELMSLEY, PETER ENFIDAVILLE
ELNE ENFIELD (Connecticut, U.S.A.)
EL OBEID ENFIELD (England)

ELOI, SAINT ENFILADE
ELONGATION ENGADINE
EL PASO ENGAGED COLUMN
ELPHINSTONE, MOUNTSTUART ENGEL, ERNST
ELPHINSTONE, WILLIAM ENGEL, JOHANN JAKOB
EL RENO ENGELBERG
ELSFLETH ENGELBRECHTSDATTER, DORTHE
ELSINORE ENGELHARDT, JOHANN GEORG
VEIT
ELSSLER, FANNY ENGHIEN, LOUIS ANTOINE HENRI
DE BOURBON CONDÉ
ELSTER (rivers of Germany) ENGHIEN
ELSTER (spa of Germany) ENGINE
ELSWICK ENGINEERING
EL TEB ENGINEERS, MILITARY
ELTON, CHARLES ISAAC ENGIS

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 electrical phenomena
will best appreciate the meaning of the terms employed by the aid of a few
simple experiments. For this purpose the following apparatus should be
provided:—(1) 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 and then
the other 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; (b) 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. 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
unelectrified. 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. The
sign of the electrification imparted to the electroscope 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 electroscopic 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 IV.—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 electroscope 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 experiment 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 the 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 polarization. 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 electrification 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 conductor, 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 approximately equal to 1/981
part of the weight of one gramme. A very small sphere is said then to
possess a charge of one electrostatic 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 vacuo
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′/Kd² dynes. For constant charges and distances the mechanical force 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 vacuo.

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 electrostatic units and is placed in an electric field at a
place where the electric force or electromotive intensity has a value E units,
it 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 otherwise 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 force, and each tube will spring from an area of the conductor
carrying a unit electric charge. Hence the charge on the conductor 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 (1 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
equipotential surface, because when the electric charge is in equilibrium
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 potential 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, however, 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 conductor is a store 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 vdq,
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 ½QV units of work. Accordingly 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 insulator
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
equilibrium or at rest, the surface of 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
everywhere 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 surface. 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 equal to 4πσ,
where σ 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
demonstrations 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 electrostatics, 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 converse
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 4π. 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 numerically 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. 1). 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 Fig. 1.
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 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 how large an opening may be made in a vessel which
yet remains for all electrical purposes “a closed conductor.” Maxwell
(Elementary Treatise, &c., 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,

we 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 rate
of change of potential in that direction or E = ± dV/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 (+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 +Q
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
electricity. 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
Potential of a concentrated at its centre. Hence a sphere having a
sphere. charge Q repels a unit charge placed at a distance x
from its centre with a force Q/x² 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 = ∫∞x Qx−2dx = Q/x
(1).

Hence the potential at the surface of the sphere, and therefore the
potential of the sphere, is Q/R, 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 mathematically 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 σdS/r, where dS is an element of
surface, σ the surface density of 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
Capacity of a centre. Accordingly the potential at the centre is
sphere. Q/R. But this must be the potential of the sphere,

since all parts are at the same potential V. Since the capacity C is the
ratio of charge to potential, the 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, l its length, and σ the uniform
Capacity of a thin surface electric density. Then consider a thin annulus
rod. of the wire of width dx; the charge on it is equal to
2πrσ/dx units, and the potential V at a point on the
axis at a distance x from the annulus due to this elementary charge is

2πrσ
V = 2 ∫ l/20 dx = 4πrσ { loge(½l + √r² + ¼l²) − loger}.
√(r² + x²)

If, then, r is small compared with l, we have V = 4πrσloge l/r. But the
charge is Q = 2πrσ, and therefore the capacity of the thin wire is given
by

C = ½ loge l/r
(2).

A more difficult case is presented by the ellipsoid5. 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
Potential of an the electric force must be zero. It is a well-known
ellipsoid. 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
interior6. 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 = μ. The potential of such a shell at any internal point is
constant, and the equipotential surfaces for external space are ellipsoids
confocal with the ellipsoidal shell. Hence if we distribute electricity
over an ellipsoid, so that its density is everywhere proportional to the
thickness of a shell formed by describing round the ellipsoid a similar
and slightly larger one, that distribution will be in equilibrium and will
produce a constant potential throughout the interior. Thus if σ is the
surface density, δ the thickness of the shell at any point, and ρ the
assumed volume density of the matter of the shell, we have σ = Aδρ.
Then the quantity of electricity on any element of surface dS 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 4πabcρμ; therefore Q =
A4πabcρμ and δ = μp, where p is the length of the perpendicular let fall
from the centre of the ellipsoid on the tangent plane. Hence

σ = Qp / 4πabc
(3).

Accordingly for a given ellipsoid the surface density of free
distribution of electricity on it is everywhere proportional to the length
of the perpendicular let fall from the centre on the
Capacity of an tangent plane at that point. From this we can
ellipsoid. 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 x²/a² + y²/b² + z²/c² = 1 to the
tangent plane at x, y, z. Then it can be shown that 1/p² = x²/a4 + y²/b4 +
z²/c4 (see Frost’s Solid Geometry, p. 172). Hence the density σ is given
by

Q 1
σ= .
4πabc √(x² / a4 + y² / b4 + z² / c4)

and the potential at the centre of the ellipsoid, and therefore its
potential as a whole is given by the expression,

σdS Q dS
V=∫ = ∫ r √(x² / a4 + y² / b4 + z² / c4)
r 4πabc (4).

Accordingly the capacity C of the ellipsoid is given by the equation

1 1 dS
C
=
4πabc
∫ √(x² + y² + z²) √(x² / a4 + y² / b4 + z² / c4)
(5).

It has been shown by Professor Chrystal that the above integral may
also be presented in the form,7

1 dλ
= ½ ∫∞0
C √{(a² + λ) (b² + λ) (c² + λ)} (6).

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

dx py 2πb²
dS = 2πyds = 2πydx / ( ) = 2πydx / ( ) = dx.
ds b p

Hence, since σ = Qp / 4πab², σdS = 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 dx
C
=
2a
∫ √(x² + y²) (7).

If the ellipsoid is one of revolution round the major axis a (prolate) and
of eccentricity e, then the above formula reduces to

1 1 1+e
= logε ( )
C1 2ae 1−e (8).

Whereas if it is an ellipsoid of revolution round the minor axis b
(oblate), we have

1 sin−1ae
=
C² ae (9).

In each case we have C = a when e = 0, and the ellipsoid thus becomes
a sphere.

In the extreme case when e = 1, the prolate ellipsoid becomes a long
thin rod, and then the capacity is given by

C1 = a / logε 2a/b
(10),

which is identical with the formula (2) already obtained. In the other
extreme case the oblate spheroid becomes a circular disk when e = 1,
and then the capacity C2 = 2a/π. This last result shows that the capacity
of a thin disk is 2/π = 1/1.571 of that of a sphere of the same radius.
Cavendish (Elec. Res. pp. 137 and 347) determined 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
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 R1 be the radius of the inner sphere, R2 the inside
radius of the outer sphere, and R2 the outside radius of the outer
spherical shell. Let a charge +Q be given to the inner
Capacity of two sphere. Then this produces a charge −Q on the inside
concentric spheres. of the enclosing spherical shell, and a charge +Q on
the outside of the shell. Hence the potential V at the
centre of the inner sphere is given by V = Q/R1 − Q/R2 + 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

C = 1/R1 − 1/R2 = (R2 − R1) / R1R2
(11).

Such a pair of concentric spheres constitute a condenser (see Leyden
Jar), and it is obvious that by making R2 nearly equal to R1, 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 R1 be enclosed in a coaxial
tube of inner radius R2. Then when the inner
Capacity of two cylinder is at potential V1 and the outer one kept at
coaxial cylinders.
potential V2 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 = −dV/dR = A/R or V = −A ∫ R−1 dR,
(12),

where R is the distance of the point in the interspace from the axis, and
A is a constant. Hence V2 − V1 = −A log R2/R1. If we consider a length
l of the cylinder, the charge Q on the inner cylinder is Q = 2πR1lσ,
where σ is the surface density, and by Coulomb’s law σ = E1/4π, where
E1 = A/R1 is the force at the surface of the inner cylinder.

Accordingly Q = 2πR1lA / 4πR1 = Al/2. If then the outer cylinder be
at zero potential the potential V of the inner one is

V = A log (R2/R1), and its capacity C = l/2 log R2/R1.

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
Capacity of two between the plates. Let V1 and V2 be the potentials
parallel planes. 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 the electric force E in the space between them is E = (V1
− V2)/d. But if σ is the surface density, E = 4πσ, and σ = Q/S. Hence
we have

(V1 − V2) d = 4πQ / S or C = Q / (V1 − V2) = S / 4πd
(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.
“Edge effect.” p. 112) 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:—

πr² r 16πr (d + t) d+t
C=
4πd
+
4πd
{ d logε
εd²
+ t logε
t
}
(14).

In the above formula ε 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.8 If a large plate has a circular hole cut
in it, and this is nearly filled up by a circular plate
Guard plates. lying in the same plane, and if we place 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 / 4πd. 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.

If we have a number of such condensers we can combine them in
“parallel” or in “series.” If all the plates on one side are connected
together and also those on the other, the condensers are joined in
parallel. If C1, C2, C3, &c., are the separate
Systems of capacities, then Σ(C) = C1 + C2 + C3 + &c., is the
condensers.
total capacity in parallel. If the condensers are so
joined that the inner coating of one is connected to
the outer coating of the next, they are said to be in series. Since then
they are all charged with the same quantity of electricity, and the total
over all potential difference V is the sum of each of the individual
potential differences V1, V2, V3, &c., we have

Q = C1V1 = C2V2 = C3V3 = &c., and V = V1 + V2 + V3 + &c.

The resultant capacity is C = Q/V, and

C = 1 / (1/C1 + 1/C2 + 1/C3 + &c.) = 1 / Σ(1/C)
(15).

These rules provide means for calculating the resultant capacity when
any number of condensers are joined up in any way.

If one condenser is charged, and then joined in parallel with another
uncharged condenser, the charge is divided between them in the ratio of
their capacities. For if C1 and C2 are the capacities and Q1 and Q2 are
the charges after contact, then Q1/C1 and Q2/C2 are the potential
differences of the coatings and must be equal. Hence Q1/C1 = Q2/C2 or

Q1/Q2 = C1/C2. 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 Units,
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 1 cm. radius.9
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 2 metres in
diameter would be 100/900,000 = 1/9000 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 (q.v.) and the other two arms completed with
variable resistance boxes. These arms are then
Relative altered until on raising or depressing the battery key
determinations. there is no sudden deflection either way of the
galvanometer. If R1 and R2 are the arms’ resistances

and C1 and C2 the condenser capacities, then when the bridge is
balanced we have R1 : R2 = C1 : C2.

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 C1 and C2 are respectively charged to
potentials V1 and V2, and then joined in parallel with terminals of
opposite charge together, the resulting potential difference of the two
condensers will be V, such that

(C1V1 − C2V2)
V=
(C + C) (16);

and hence if V is zero we have C1 : C2 = V2 : V1.

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.10 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 expeditiously.

A simple method for condenser comparison is to charge the two
condensers 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.

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
Absolute discharge it through a
determinations. galvanometer and repeat Fig. 2.
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 series of
intermittent discharges is equivalent to a current nCV. 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.
Glazebrook, J.A. Fleming and W.C. Clinton and others.11 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 and three wire brushes a, b, c (see fig. 2) pressing
against them. The metal slips are so placed that, as the disk revolves,
the middle brush, connected to one terminal of the condenser C, is
alternately 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 determining it numerically is,
therefore, that adopted by Faraday.12 He constructed two equal condensers,
each consisting of a metal 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 and
enclosing sphere that it formed a condenser with solid dielectric. He then
determined the ratio of the capacities of the two condensers, 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
following values, for shellac K = 2.0, glass K = 1.76, and sulphur K = 2.24.

Table I.—Dielectric Constants (K) of Solids (K for Air = 1).

Substance. K. Authority.
Glass, double extra dense flint, density 4.5 9.896 J. Hopkinson
Glass, light flint, density 3.2 6.72 ”
Glass, hard crown, density 2.485 6.61 ”
Sulphur 2.24 M. Faraday
2.88 Coullner
3.84 L. Boltzmann
4.0 P.J. Curie

2.94 P.R. Blondlot
2.05 Rosetti
3.15 Boltzmann
Ebonite
2.21 Schiller
2.86 Elsas
India-rubber, pure brown 2.12 Schiller
India-rubber, vulcanized, grey 2.69 ”
Gutta-percha 2.462 J.E. H. Gordon
1.977 Gibson and Barclay
2.32 Boltzmann
Paraffin
2.29 J. Hopkinson
1.99 Gordon
2.95 Wällner
Shellac 2.74 Gordon
3.04 A.A. Winkelmann
6.64 I. Klemenčič
8.00 P.J. Curie
Mica
7.98 E.M.L. Bouty
5.97 Elsas
Quartz—
along optic axis 4.55 P.J. Curie
perp. to optic axis 4.49 P.J. Curie
Ice at −23° 78.0 Bouty

Since Faraday’s time, by improved methods, but depending essentially
upon the same principles, an enormous number of 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. Heerwagen
” ” 25° C. 75.7 E.B. Rosa
” ” 25.3° C. 78.87 Franke
Olive oil 3.16 Hopkinson
Castor oil 4.78 ”
Turpentine 2.15 P.A. Silow
” 2.23 Hopkinson
Petroleum 2.072 Silow
” 2.07 Hopkinson
Ethyl alcohol at 25° C. 25.7 Rosa
Ethyl ether 4.57 Doule
” ” 4.8 Bouty
Acetic acid 9.7 Franke

Table III.—Dielectric Constant of some Bodies at a very low Temperature
(−185° C.) (Fleming and Dewar).

K K
Substance.
at 15° C. at −185°C.
Water 80 2.4 to 2.9
Formic acid 62 2.41
Glycerine 56 3.2
Methyl alcohol 34 3.13
Nitrobenzene 32 2.6

Ethyl alcohol 25 3.1
Acetone 21.85 2.62
Ethyl nitrate 17.7 2.73
Amyl alcohol 16 2.14
Aniline 7.5 2.92
Castor oil 4.78 2.19
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.13

The dielectric constants of gases have been determined by L. Boltzmann
and I. Klemenčič as follows:—

Table IV.—Dielectric Constants (K) of Gases at 15° C. and 760 mm.
Vacuum = 1.

Optical
Dielectric
Refractive
Gas. Constant √K.
Index.
K.
μ.
Air 1.000590 1.000295 1.000293
Hydrogen 1.000264 1.000132 1.000139
Carbon dioxide 1.000946 1.000475 1.000454
Carbon monoxide 1.000690 1.000345 1.000335
Nitrous oxide 1.000994 1.000497 1.000516
Ethylene 1.001312 1.000656 1.000720
Marsh gas (methane) 1.000944 1.000478 1.000442
Carbon bisulphide 1.002900 1.001450 1.001478

Sulphur dioxide 1.00954 1.004770 1.000703
Ether 1.00744 1.003720 1.00154
Ethyl chloride 1.01552 1.007760 1.001174
Ethyl bromide 1.01546 1.007730 1.00122

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 lies the
phenomenon of residual charge in dielectrics.14 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.15 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 between its
coatings is analogous to the reappearance of a torque in 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
referred 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
reappearance of the residual charge; “On the Residual Charge of the
Leyden Jar,” ib. 167 [ii.], p. 599, containing many valuable
observations on the residual charge of Leyden jars; W.E. Ayrton and J.
Perry, “A Preliminary Account of the Reduction of Observations on
Strained Material, Leyden Jars and Voltameters,” Proc. Roy. Soc.,
1880, 30, p. 411, showing experiments on residual charge of
condensers and a comparison between the behaviour of dielectrics and
glass fibres under torsion. In connexion with this paper the reader may
also be referred to one by L. Boltzmann, “Zur Theorie der elastischen
Nachwirkung,” Wien. Acad. Sitz.-Ber., 1874, 70.

Distribution of Electricity on Conductors.—We now proceed to
consider 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 q units placed on a very small sphere,
commonly called a point-charge, at any distance x is q/x. The
mathematical importance of this function called the potential is that it
is a scalar quantity, and the potential at any point due to any number of
point charges q1, q2, q3, &c., distributed in any manner, is the sum of
them separately, or

q1/x1 + q2/x2 + q3/x3 + &c. = Σ (q/x) = V
(17),

where x1, x2, x3, &c., 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 E 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 equipotential 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 equipotential
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 θ to the normal to the selected surface at that point.
Let dS be an element of the surface. Then the quantity E cos θdS 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 θdS, provided
that the dielectric constant of the medium is unity.

We have then a very important
theorem as follows:—If any closed
surface be described in an electric field
which wholly encloses or wholly
excludes electrified bodies, then the
total flux through this surface is equal
to 4π- times the total quantity of
electricity within it.16 This is
commonly called Stokes’s theorem. The proof is 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 dω
cutting out of the enclosing surface in two small areas dS and dS′ at
distances x and x′. Then the electric force due to the point charge q at
distance x is q/x, and the resolved part normal to the element of surface
dS is q cosθ / x². The normal section of the cone at that point is equal to
dS cosθ, and the solid angle dω is equal to dS cosθ / x². Hence the flux
through dS is qdω. Accordingly, since the total solid angle round a
point is 4π, it follows that the total flux through the closed surface due
to the single point charge q is 4πq, and what is true for one point charge
is true for any collection forming a total charge Q of any form. Hence
the total electric flux due to a charge Q through an enclosing surface is
4πQ, 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 the
stream lines will be radial lines. Let a very small sphere be described
round the source, and let the strength of the source be defined 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 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 4π times the strengths of all the sources
enclosed. To every proposition 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, dz respectively, its
centre having co-ordinates (x, y, z). Its angular points have then co-
ordinates (x ± ½dx, y ± ½dy, z ± ½dz). Let this rectangular prism be
supposed to be wholly filled up with electricity of density ρ; then the
total quantity in it is ρ dx dy dz. Consider the two faces perpendicular
to the x-axis. Let V be the potential at the centre of the prism, then the
normal forces on the two faces of area dy·dx are respectively

dV d²V dV d²V
−( +½ dx) and ( −½ dx),
dx dx² dx dx²

and similar expressions for the normal forces to the other pairs of faces
dx·dy, dz·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 −(d²V / dx²) dx dy dz, and similar expressions for the other
sides. Hence the total flux is

d²V d²V d²V
−( + + ) dx dy dz,
dx² dy² dz²

and by the previous theorem this must be equal to 4πρdx dy dz.

Hence

d²V d²V d²V
+ + + 4πρ = 0
dx² dy² dz² (18).

This celebrated equation was first given by S.D. Poisson, although
previously demonstrated by Laplace for the case when ρ = 0. It defines
the condition which must be fulfilled by the potential at any and every
point in an electric field, through which ρ is finite and the electric force
continuous. It may be looked upon as an equation to determine ρ 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 outwards 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 dS described on a conductor having a
surface density of electrification σ. Then let a small, very short cylinder
be described of which dS is a section, and the generating lines are
normal to the surface. Let V1 and V2 be the potentials at points just
outside and inside the surface dS, and let n1 and n2 be the normals to
the surface dS drawn outwards and inwards; then −dV1 / dn1 and −dV2
/ dn2 are the normal components 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 −{(dV1 / dn1) + (dV2 / dn2)} dS, and
this by a previous theorem must be equal to 4πσdS, or the total
included electric quantity. Hence we have the surface characteristic
equation,17

(dV1 / dn1) + (dV2 / dn2) + 4πσ = 0
(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 EdS 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 σ. The
electric force outward from that point is −dV/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 = 4.0πσ or σ = −(¼π) dV/dn = E/4π.

The above is a statement of Coulomb’s law, that the electric force at
the surface of a conductor is proportional to the surface density of the
charge at that point and equal to 4π times the density.18

If we define the positive direction along a tube of electric force as
the direction in which a small body charged with positive electricity
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 4π-times
the algebraic sum of all the electricity included within the surface.

Every 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 σ/4π, where σ
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 σdS = σ′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
Fig. 4.
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 height a length equal to the final potential 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 ½QV, or since Q = CV, where C is its capacity, the work
done is represented by ½CV² or by ½Q² / C.

If σ is the surface density and dS an element of surface, then ∫σdS is
the whole charge, and hence ½ ∫ VσdS 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:19 Let V denote
the potential at any point in the field. Consider the integral

1 dV ² dV ² dV ²
W=
8π
∫ ∫ ∫ {( dx ) + ( dy ) + ( dz ) } dx dy dz.
(21)

where the integration extends throughout the whole space unoccupied
by conductors. We have by partial integration

dV ² dV d²V
∫ ∫ ∫ ( dx ) dx dy dz = ∫ ∫ V dx dy dz − ∫ ∫ ∫ V dx² dx dy dz,
and two similar equations in y and z. Hence

1 dV ² dV ² dV ²
8π
∫ ∫ ∫ {( dx
) +(
dy
) +(
dz
) } dx dy dz =
1 dV 1
8π
∫ ∫ V
dn
dS −
8π
∫ ∫ ∫ V∇V dx dy dz
(22)

where dV/dn means differentiation along the normal, and ∇ stands for
the operator d²/dx² + d²/dy² + d²/dz². Let E be the resultant electric
force at any point in the field. Then bearing in mind that σ = (1/4π)
dV/dn, and ρ = −(1/4π) ∇V, we have finally

1 1 1
8π
∫ ∫ ∫ E²dv =
2
∫ ∫ Vσ dS +
2
∫ ∫ ∫ Vρ dv.
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 ½DE 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 ∇V = 0. Hence that distribution of potential which is necessary 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.20 By older mathematical
methods it had only been possible to
predict in a few simple cases the
Fig. 5.
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 certain
field of electric force on the left of the plate PO, which is a zero
equipotential surface. If we remove the plate, and 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 q/AP − q/BP = O, whilst the
resultant force at P due to the two point charges is 2qAO/AP³, 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 σ,
according to the Coulomb-Poisson law, σ = qAO / 2πAP³, the field 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 +q 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 second 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 +q 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 induced
electricity over a metal sphere

connected to earth produced by a Fig. 6.

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 = r², or CB = r²/d. 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

q rq 1
− · =0
PA d PB (24).

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 = − (d² − r²) q / rAP³
(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 σ varying according to the law

σ = −(d² − r²) q / 4πrAP³
(26),

that distribution, together with the point-charge +q at A, will make a
distribution of electric force at all points outside the sphere exactly
similar to that which would exist if the sphere were removed and a

negative point charge −qr/d were placed at B. Hence this charge is the
electrical image of the charge +q at A in the spherical surface.

We may generalize these statements in the following theorem, which
is an important deduction 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 equipotential
surface enclosing the whole of the electricity, and suppose this to
become an actual sheet of metal connected to the earth. It is then a zero
potential surface, and every point outside is at zero potential as 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 = 0 or U = −V at all points outside
the earthed metal surface. Therefore, whatever may be the distribution
of electric force produced by the charges inside taken alone, it can be
exactly imitated for all space outside the metal surface if we suppose
the inside charge removed and a distribution of electricity of the same
sign made over the metal surface such that its density follows the law

σ = −(¼π) dU / dn
(27),

where dU/dn is the electric force at that point on the closed
equipotential 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 Researches 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 books: J. Clerk Maxwell,
Elementary Treatise on Electricity (Oxford, 1881); J.J. Thomson,
Elements of the Mathematical Theory of Electricity and Magnetism
(Cambridge, 1895); J.D. Everett, Electricity, founded on part iii. of
Deschanel’s Natural Philosophy (London, 1901); G.C. Foster and A.W.
Porter, Elementary Treatise on Electricity and Magnetism (London,
1903); S.P. Thompson, Elementary Lessons on Electricity and
Magnetism (London, 1903)·

When these elementary books have been digested, the advanced
student may proceed to study the following: J. Clerk Maxwell, A
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 Mathematical Theory of
Electricity and Magnetism (Oxford, 1885); 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 Rayleigh (4 vols.,
Cambridge, 1903), the advanced student will find the means for
studying the historical development of electrical knowledge as it has
been evolved from the minds of some of the master workers of the 19th
century. (J. A. F.)

1 See Maxwell, Elementary Treatise on Electricity (Oxford, 1881), p. 47.

2 See Maxwell, Treatise on Electricity and Magnetism (3rd ed., Oxford, 1892), vol. i. p.
80.

3 Maxwell, Ibid. vol. i. § 74a; 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 demonstration 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.

5 The solution of the problem of determining the distribution on 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. 119, 1871).

6 See Thomson and Tait, Treatise on Natural Philosophy, § 519.

7 See article “Electricity,” Encyclopaedia Britannica (9th edition), vol. viii. 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.

8 See Maxwell, Electricity and Magnetism, vol. i. pp. 284-305 (3rd ed., 1892).

9 It is an interesting fact that Cavendish measured capacity in “globular inches,” using
as his unit the capacity of a metal ball, 1 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. Res. p.
347.

10 For fuller details of these methods of comparison of capacities see J.A. Fleming, A
Handbook for the Electrical Laboratory and Testing Room, vol. ii. ch. ii. (London, 1903).

11 See Fleming, Handbook for the Electrical Laboratory, vol. ii. p. 130.

12 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 Physik, vol. iv. pp. 98-148 (Breslau, 1905); also see Landolt and Börnstein’s
Tables of Physical Constants (Berlin, 1894).

13 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 Dibromide 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.

14 See Faraday, Experimental Researches, vol. i. § 1245; R.H.A. Kohlrausch, Pogg.
Ann., 1854, 91; see also Maxwell, Electricity and 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 charge.

15 Fleming and Ashton, “On a Model which imitates the behaviour of Dielectrics.”
Phil. Mag., 1901 [6], 2, p. 228.

16 The beginner is often puzzled by the constant appearance of the factor 4π 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 q/r², and
the total flux or induction through the sphere of radius r is therefore 4πq. If, however, the
unit point charge were defined to be that which produces a unit of electric flux through a
circumscribing spherical surface or the electric force at distance r defined to be ¼πr², many
theorems would be enunciated in simpler forms.

17 See Maxwell, Electricity and Magnetism, vol. i. § 78b (2nd ed.).

18 Id. ib. vol. i. § 80. Coulomb proved the proportionality of electric surface force to
density, but the above numerical relation E = 4πσ was first established by Poisson.

19 See Maxwell, Electricity and Magnetism, vol. i. § 99a (3rd ed., 1892), where the
expression in question is deduced as a corollary of Green’s theorem.

20 See Lord Kelvin’s Papers on Electrostatics and Magnetism, p. 144.

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 faradism or galvanism,
cells of the Leclanché 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 of producing a smooth current in the secondary coil is for the
interruptor hammer to vibrate directly against the iron core of the primary
coil. For this it is best that the interruptor be made of 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 interruptor 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
measuring 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 hand until these begin
to contract and a definite sensory effect is produced; the current can then be
applied to the part, being strengthened 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
Leclanché, with E.M.F. (or voltage) of 1.5 and an internal resistance of .3
ohm. Thus the exact strength of the current is known; the number of cells
usually employed is 24, and when new give an E.M.F. of about 36 volts. By
using the formula C = E/R, where E is the voltage of the battery, R 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 by thoroughly wetting both skin and electrodes with sodium
bicarbonate solution, and keeping the electrodes in very close apposition to
the skin. A galvanometer is always fitted to the battery, 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 becoming 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 administered 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 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 normal 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 permanently 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 stimulated, 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 attenuated 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.
Treatment 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 bicarbonate. 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 quiescent. 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 stronger 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 slowly, though the contraction as a whole
may be larger than that of a normal muscle. This excessive contraction is
known as hyperexcitability to galvanism. This form of contraction is that
obtained when the muscle fibre itself is stimulated. Again, whereas in
normal muscle KCC > ACC, when the nerve is degenerated KCC = ACC or
ACC > KCC. Also in the 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

reaction of degeneration or RD, 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 fibres proceeding from these
cells. Thus RD is present in infantile paralysis, acute neuritis, &c., but
absent in progressive 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, as 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 hemiplegia, are
all benefited by the continuous current; the severe pain of sciatica, and the
inflammation 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, are 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 ionization 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

constituents in solution throughout the body. When a current is passed
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
the 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
phosphates may be taken as examples. Some are extremely toxic, 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 probably 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 electrolysis. Thus a solution of cocaine
injected subcutaneously produces 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 introduced 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 adhesive plaster which
is applied to the skin and on which the electrolytic 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 sclerolytic property of the current is applicable to all parts of the body
accessible to the current. Old cases of rheumatic scleritis, entirely
unaffected by the routine treatment of salicylates and iodide, have often
cleared up entirely under electrolytic treatment. Cases of chronic iritis with
adhesions and old pleural adhesions are also suited for this method of
procedure. Certain menstrual troubles of women and also endometritis yield
rapidly to electrolysis 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
kataphoresis 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 bloodless by the admixture of suprarenal
extract.

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 1½ ℔ of copper sulphate and ½ ℔ 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 deposition), 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. ἤλεκτρον, 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. (1285), 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
judgment, 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 ἐλεγεία 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 ἐλεγεία. The earliest Greek elegies which have come down to
us are not funereal, although it is possible that the primitive ἐλεγεία 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 7th
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 warlike 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 of 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 perfection 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 publishing 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
16th 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 17th 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 (1755) 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 18th 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 hold of English
literature, but was welcomed in France in the amatory works of Parny
(1753-1814), in those of Chênedollé (1769-1833), and of Millevoye (1782-
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 ejaculatory. Thus Tennyson’s In Memoriam 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 Adonais remain the two
unapproachable types of what a personal elegy ought to be in English.

( )

ELEMENT (Lat. elementum), an ultimate component of anything, hence a fundamental principle.
Elementum was used in Latin to translate the Greek στοιχεῖον (that which stands in a στοῖχος, or row), and is
a word of obscure origin and etymology. The root of Lat. alere, to nourish, has been suggested, thus making it
a doublet of alimentum, that which supports 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” (τὰπτωχὰ στοιχεῖα, of St Paul in Gal. iv. 9);
in mathematics, of a fundamental 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 Battery: 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 seen 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 amount of real chemical knowledge, the
generalizations of the ancients were necessarily rather superficial, and could not stand in
Ancient ideas. 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 it promises some comprehensive arrangement of the facts; afterwards, 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 ideas 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 the facts. As facts are unchangeable by themselves, the
adaptation can be only one-sided; the ideas are 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. Empedocles 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 rôle 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 properties 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 properties 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 a number of other common properties.
According to the general principle of selecting a single substance as a representative of the
Elements of the group, the metallic properties were represented by “mercury.” The theoreticians of the
alchemists. 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 properties 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 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 manifoldness 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 recognized generally that there are certain chemical
families whose members are related to one another by their mutual transformability, 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 should be recognized as elements,
an element being a substance from which other substances may be made, but which cannot
Work of Robert be separated into different substances. He showed that neither the peripatetic nor the
Boyle. 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 given one—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 compound 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 considerably from those of
the compounds. On the one hand, the corpuscular hypothesis of Boyle was developed into the atomic
hypothesis of Dalton, which was considered at the beginning of the 19th 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 impossible, 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 distinguishing different chemical
substances, was rapidly developing, and the necessary foundation for such a theory was
Phlogiston theory. thus laid. We find the discussions about the true elements disappearing from the text-books,
or removed to an insignificant corner, while the description of observed chemical changes
of different ways of preparing the same substance, 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 combustibility,” 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 combustibility 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 18th century used the phlogiston theory and were not
hindered by it in making their great discoveries, 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 paramount interest and importance, and that the question of the changes of weight in chemical reactions
became one worth asking. When in due time this question was raised, the fact became
Lavoisier’s reform. evident at once, that combustion 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 substances 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
substance which, by being changed into another substance, invariably 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 19th 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 interest at once, and led to the concept of the combining weights of the elements.

The first discoveries in this field were made in the last quarter of the 18th 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 resulting liquid was
J.B. Richter’s neutral again, i.e. it did not contain any excess of acid or base. In other words, if two salts,
work. 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 are 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 salts. 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 series 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. Acids.
Alumina 525 Fluoric 427
Magnesia 615 Carbonic 577
Ammoniac 672 Sebacic 706
Lime 793 Muriatic (hydrochloric) 712
Soda 859 Oxalic 755
Strontiane 1329 Phosphoric 979
Potash 1605 Formic 988
Baryte 2222 Sulphuric 1000
Succinic 1209
Nitric 1405
Acetic 1480
Citric 1683
Tartaric 1694

It is interesting again to notice how difficult it is for the discoverer of a new truth to find out the most
simple and complete 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 Berthollet’s Essai de statique chimique, 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 19th century the same question was taken up from quite another standpoint. John
Dalton, in his investigations of the behaviour of gases, and in order to understand more easily what happened
when gases were absorbed by liquids, used the corpuscular hypothesis already mentioned
John Dalton’s in connexion with Boyle. While he depicted to himself how the corpuscles, or, as he
atomic theory. preferred to call them, the “atoms” of the gases, entered the interstices of the atoms of the
liquids in which they dissolved, he asked himself: Are the several atoms of the same
substance exactly alike, or are there differences as between the grains of 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 that 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.

Hydrogen 1 Nitrous oxide 13.7
Azot 4.2 Sulphur 14.4
Carbone 4.3 Nitric acid 15.2
Ammonia 5.2 Sulphuretted hydrogen 15.4
Oxygen 5.5 Carbonic acid 15.3
Water 6.5 Alcohol 15.1
Phosphorus 7.2 Sulphureous acid 19.9
Phosphuretted hydrogen 8.2 Sulphuric acid 25.4
Nitrous gas 9.3 Carburetted hydrogen from
Ether 9.6 stagnant water 6.3
Gaseous oxide of carbone 9.8 Olefiant gas 5.3

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 element 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 for 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 Richter’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
Work of J.J. the law to hold good in most cases; when it did not, according to his analyses, he found that
Berzelius. 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 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 independently 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 therefore
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 century 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 combining 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 discovered) 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, PbSO4, no excess either of sulphur or lead could be found after oxidation; the
same held good with barium sulphite, BaSO3, when converted into barium sulphate, BaSO4. 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, AgClO3, silver bromate, AgBrO3, and silver iodate, AgIO3, to the corresponding binary compounds,
AgCl, AgBr and AgI, 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 decomposition of salts involves the law of the combining weights of acids and bases. For if the
ratio between A and B is determined, 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
AB2. By extending this reasoning in the same way, we get the general conclusion that any compounds must
be composed according to the formula AmBnCp..., 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 results from the fact that the same elements
may combine in different ratios. Which of these ratios gives the true ratio of the atomic
Atomic weight weights? And which is the multiple one? Both questions have had most ample
determinations. 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 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 times American chemists have been especially prominent in work of this kind, and the
determinations of E.W. 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 does the exactness 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 H. 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 U, 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 filled 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 mg. with 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 1908 (Zeit. physik.
Chem. 64, 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 1 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 endeavoured to prove that they form a certain mathematical 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
The periodic his time a new base was discovered, which fitted rather well into one of his gaps; but when
arrangement. 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. Berzelius 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 19th century S.
Cannizzaro 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. Döbereiner 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 successful. 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. Mendeléeff 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 Mendeléeff gave to all these trials the shape now
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 discovered, and Mendeléeff, 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 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.

He 4.0 Li 7.03 Be 9.1 B 11.0 C 12.00 N 14.01 O 16.00 F 19.0 .. .. ..
Ne 20 Na 23.00 Mg 24.32 Al 27.1 Si 28.4 P 31.0 S 32.06 Cl 35.45 .. .. ..
Ar 39.9 K 39.15 Ca 40.1 Sc 44.1 Ti 48.1 V 51.2 Cr 52.0 Mn 55.0 Fe 55.9, Ni 58.7, Co 59.0
.. Cu 63.6 In 65.4 Ga 70 Ge 72.5 As 75.0 Se 79.2 Br 79.96 .. .. ..
Kr 83.0 Rb 85.5 Sr 87.6 Y 89.0 Zr 90.6 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 Cs 132.9 Ba 137.4 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 .. .. .. ..

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 irregularities; 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 elements. The wonderful substance
radium, whose existence has made us to revise quite a number of old and established
Transmutation of views, seems to be a fulfilment of the old problem of the alchemists. It is true that by its
elements. 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 somewhat inexact first determinations William Prout concluded that all atomic
weights are multiples of the atomic weight of hydrogen, thus suggesting all other elements
Prout’s to be probably made up from condensed hydrogen. Berzelius found his determinations not
assumption. 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, 1 : 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
International table done for their determination. To avoid the uncertainty arising from this inevitable state of
of atomic weights. 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.

Atomic Atomic
Name. Symbol. Weights. Name. Symbol. Weights.
O = 16. O = 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 Be Nitrogen N 14.01
9.1
(Glucinum) Gl Osmium Os 190.9
Bismuth Bi 208.0 Oxygen O 16.00
Boron B 11.0 Palladium Pd 106.7
Bromine Br 79.92 Phosphorus P 31.0
Cadmium Cd 112.40 Platinum Pt 195.0
Caesium Cs 132.81 Potassium 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 Cl 35.46 Rubidium Rb 85.45
Chromium Cr 52.0 Ruthenium Ru 101.7
Cobalt Co 58.97 Samarium Sm 150.4
Columbium Cb Scandium Sc 44.1
93.5
(Niobium) (Nb) Selenium Se 79.2
Copper Cu 63.57 Silicon Si 28.3
Dysprosium Dy 162.5 Silver Ag 107.88
Erbium Er 167.4 Sodium 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 Th 159.2
Gold Au 197.2 Thallium Tl 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 I 126.92 Titanium Ti 48.1
Iridium 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
Lithium Li 7.00 (Neoytterbium) 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

In the long and manifold development of the concept of the element one idea has remained prominent from
the very beginning 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
Concluding the conservation of the elements. By an experimental investigation which extended over
remarks. 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 negative.
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 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 with 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.” But 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. Considered 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 conservative 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 can be objects of our knowledge. In the same way all other energies come to our knowledge only by
being (at least temporarily) 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. Burseraceae), which when fresh and of good quality is a pale yellow granular substance,
of honey-like consistency, but which gradually hardens with age. It is soluble in alcohol and ether, and has a
spicy taste with a smell like fennel. In the 17th and 18th centuries the term elemi usually denoted an oleo-
resin (American or Brazilian elemi) obtained from trees of the genus Icica in Brazil, and still earlier it meant
oriental or African elemi, derived from Boswellia Frereana, which flourishes in the neighbourhood of Cape
Gardafui. The word, like the older term animi, appears to have been derived from enhaemon (Gr. ἔναιμον),
the name of a 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 Elephas, are given in the article
Proboscidea, 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 extreme complexity of the structure of its molar teeth, which are composed of a great
number of tall and thin plates of enamel and dentine, with the intervals filled by cement (see Proboscidea, fig.
1). The average number of plates of the six successive molar teeth may be expressed by the “ridge-formula”
4, 8, 12, 12, 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. Ears of 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 11, 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 Game 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 nutriment is largely composed of
boughs and roots. Another difference 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 Fig. 1.
Asiatic Elephant (Elephas maximus).
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 adversary with its trunk safely rolled
up out of danger, endeavouring 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
therefore 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.

Fig. 2.—Immature African Elephant (Elephas africanus).

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 comparatively 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 Bilaspur 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-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 ℔. These are, however, by no means the heaviest—one, whose length
is 7 ft. 33⁄8 in., weighing 102 ℔; while a second, of which the length is 7 ft. 3¼ in., scaled 97½ ℔. 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 77¾ ℔, 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 exterminated 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 226½ ℔; 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. Hagenbeck, 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
measurement 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 probability 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. cyclotis 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 transverse 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 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 practically 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 melitensis, E. mnaidriensis
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 support from the occurrence of a dwarf form of the African elephant in the Congo; and if
we regard the latter as a subspecies of Elephas africanus, 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 Elephas
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 hippopotamus, 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 latter 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), a 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 cultivation 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 Portuguese 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 compartments, containing representations
of the Hindu deities, but many of the figures have been defaced by the zeal of the Mahommedans and
Portuguese. In the centre of the excavations is a remarkable Trimurti 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 it’s hand a cobra, while on the cap are, 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
10th 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 1875 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, (1)
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, occasionally 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 recrudescences 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 performed 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 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.

ELEPHANT’S-FOOT, the popular name for the plant Testudinaria 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, 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 1147, when it was a fort of Ryazan. The Turkish Polovtsi or Kumans attacked it
in the 12th 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
15th century. Its development dates from the second half of the 17th 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 Πεδίον Ῥάριον or Rharian Plain, where Demeter is said to 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 Ἐλευσίς.

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 successive stages in the history of the Telesterion, or Hall of Initiation. 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 Roman
pavement, the curb surrounding an early well. This is almost certainly the λλίχορον φρέαρ mentioned by
Pausanias. The Great Propylaea is a structure of Roman imperial date, in close imitation of the Propylaea on
the Athenian Acropolis. It is, 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 identification 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 foundations 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 170 ft. square. It was surrounded
on all sides by steps, which must have served as seats for the mystae, 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. Dörpfeld 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 substantially 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 corners 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 Bouleuterion. The precinct was full of altars, dedications and inscriptions; 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 Ἐφημερὶς Ἀρχαιολογική and in the Πρακτικά of the Greek Archaeological Society, especially
for 1887 and 1895. See also D. Philios, Éleusis, ses mystères, ses ruines, et son musée. Inscriptions
have also been published in the Bulletin de correspondance hellénique.
(E. Gr.)

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. Ἐλευθέρα πόλις, “free city”), an ancient city of Palestine, 25 m. from
Jerusalem on the road to Gaza, identified by E. Robinson with the modern Beit Jibrīn. 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 Onomasticon 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 Jibrīn 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 Jibrīn honeycomb the hills all round. These are immense artificial excavations 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 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.

Fig. 1.—The Plunger, or Direct Lift Hydraulic Engine.

Fig. 2.—The Otis Standard Hydraulic Passenger Lift, with Pilot Valve and Lever-operating Device.

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 correspondingly long plunger, which rises
and falls as required and carries the elevator-cage on its upper end (fig. 1). The “stroke” is
Construction of thus necessarily equal to the height traversed by the cage, with some surplus to keep the
elevators. plunger steady within its guiding-pipe. The pipe or pump 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 (occasionally 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 is connected with a set of
pulleys at each end of a frame (fig. 2). The rope is made fast at one end, and its intermediate part is carried
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 which 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 be absolutely 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
Essentials of its projection by an overweighted balance upwards against the top of its shaft. It must be
design, &c. 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
inconveniencing 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 parts 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 ℔ 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 buildings, as the Singer
and Metropolitan buildings in New York, elevators have been installed having a maximum speed of 600 ft. a
minute, with a rise of over 500 ft. Where electric motors 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 20 down to 4
or 5 h.p. Two or more counter-weights are 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
17,000 ℔ 65 ft. in some of its shafts, in 30 secs. from start to stop. Over 100,000 ft. of 7⁄8 in. and 17,000 ft. of
¾ in. steel rope are required 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 ℔, the remainder of the load being taken by the counterbalance. 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 permit 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 pressure. 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 instantly 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
Safety devices. the carrying sheaves at the top of the shaft, since the friction and
inertia 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 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 relative 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 precautions against the most common accidents.

The “travelling staircase,” which may be classed among the passenger elevators, Fig. 3.
Safety Air-Cushion.
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 themselves, 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 composer, 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 1884. 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
succeeded 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 Hope 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 5419 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 71¼ 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 considerable
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 immediately after national independence had been reasserted. The hill on which it
stood was renamed the Ladyhill, and on the scanty ruins of the castle now stands a monument to the 5th 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 afterwards. For fifty years after this date the place retained the character
and traditions of a sleepy cathedral city, but with the approach of the 19th 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 flourishing 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 1390 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 1538 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.
Undismayed, 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-east of the main structure, suffered least of all the buildings, and contains a
’Prentice pillar, of which a similar story is 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 preceptory of Maisondieu (1240).
They also were permitted to fall into decay, but the 3rd marquess of Bute undertook the restoration of the
Greyfriars’ 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 gardening, tanning, saw and flour mills, iron-
foundries and manufactures 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
1150 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
1230. 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 comes down to the death of James I. The 3rd marquess of Bute acquired the ruins in 1897.

ELGIN AND KINCARDINE, EARLS OF. Thomas Bruce, 7th earl of Elgin (1766-1841), British
diplomatist and art collector, was born on the 20th of July 1766, and in 1771 succeeded his brother in the
Scottish peerage as the 7th earl of Elgin (cr. 1633), and 11th of Kincardine (cr. 1647). He was educated at
Harrow and Westminster, and, after studying for some time at the university 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 1792 he was appointed envoy at Brussels, and in 1795 envoy extraordinary at
Berlin; and from 1799 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
artistic value of many of the marbles; but he vindicated himself 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 representative peer for fifty years. He died at Paris on the 14th
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 12th 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 administration of four years he succeeded in
winning the respect of all classes. He improved the condition of the negroes and conciliated 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 powerfully. 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 1849 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 11th 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 12th 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 execution 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 responsibility, 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
integrity of our own north-west frontier, Lord Elgin assembled a camp of exercise at Lahore, and marched a

force to the Peshawar 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 20th 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, 9th earl of Elgin (1849- ), British statesman, was born on the 16th of May
1849, the son of the 8th earl, and was educated at Eton and Balliol College, Oxford. In 1863 he succeeded as
9th earl of Elgin and 13th 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 1905, 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, or Moray (Gaelic “among the seaboard men”), a northern county of Scotland, bounded N.
by the Moray Firth, E. and S.E. by Banffshire, S. and S.W. by Inverness and W. by Nairnshire. It comprises
only the eastern portion of the ancient province of Moray, which extended from the Spey to the Beauly and
from the Grampians to the sea, embracing an area of about 3900 sq. m. The area of the county is 305,119
acres, or 477 sq. m.

Elginshire is naturally divided into two sections, the level and fertile coast and its hinterland—“the Laigh o’
Moray,” a tract 30 m. long by from 5 to 12 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 important rivers, the Spey (q.v.) 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 12 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 Lossie 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 Firth; Ballintomb Burn, Rothes Burn and Tulchan Burn are left-hand affluents of
the Spey; the Dorbock and Divie, uniting their forces near Dunphail House, join the Findhorn 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 Spynie, 2½ m. N., and Loch-na-Bo, 4 m. S.E. of Elgin; Loch of Blairs,
2½ 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 2½ 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 19th 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 ½ m. wide. In the upper end, on an island
believed to be artificial, stand the ruins of Lochindorb Castle, in the 14th century the stronghold of the Wolf
of Badenoch, and afterwards successively the property of the earl of Moray, the Campbells of Cawdor and the
earl of Seafield. Sir Thomas 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 Lossie, Glen Gheallaidh, Glen Tulchan and Glen Beag. Strathspey, though more of a valley than a glen,
is remarkable for its extent and beauty.

Geology.—This county may be divided geologically into two areas, the hilly region to the south
being composed of the crystalline schists of the Central Highlands and the fertile plain of Moray being
made up of Old Red Sandstone and Triassic strata. In the Cromdale Hills in the south-east of the county
the metamorphic series comprises schistose quartzite, quartz-schists, micaceous flagstones and mica-
schists, which are granulitic and holocrystalline, the dark laminae in some cases containing heavy
residues such as ilmenite and zircon. The greater portion of the metamorphic area west of the Spey
consists 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 Findhorn, the Divie and the tributaries of the Spey. Near Grantown there is a group
locally developed, comprising crystalline limestone with tremolite, kyanite gneiss, muscovite-biotite-
schist and quartzite, the age and relations of which are still uncertain. The general strike of the
crystalline schists, save where there are local deflections, is north-east and south-west, and the general

dip is to the south-east. Between Lochindorb and Grantown there is a mass of granite belonging to the
later intrusions of the Highlands represented by the Cairngorm granite. Within the county there are
representatives of the middle and upper divisions of the Old Red 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
of the well-known localities for ichthyolites in the middle or Orcadian division. In the Tynet and
Gollachie Burn sections, the fish bed is overlaid by conglomerates and red pebbly sandstones, passing
upwards into a thin zone of andesite 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 Lethen 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 discordance
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 Quarrywood, 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; Telerpeton and
Hyperodapedon, species of lizards; Dicynodonts (Gordonia and Geikia) and a horned reptile, Elginia
mirabilis (see Scotland: Geology). 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 transported 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 58.5°,
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 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 Burghead. 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 visited by calamities. The first village was overwhelmed by the drifting sands of Culbin, and
the second was buried beneath the waves in 1701. 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 14th
of August 1040, in which Thorfinn, earl of Orkney and Shetland, overthrew a strong force of Scots under
King Duncan, the consolidation of the kingdom was being gradually accomplished. After Macbeth ascended
the throne the Scandinavians held their hands. Though Macbeth and his fainéant successor, “daft” Lulach,
were the only kings whom Moray gave to Scotland, 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 12th 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 fastnesses and plundered the Laigh, keeping the people for generations 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 Moravia), 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 parliament at Berwick. Wallace, however, had no doughtier supporter than
Sir Andrew Moray of Bothwell, 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 the Moray 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 celebrated 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 grâce 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, belonging 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 August 1829. The Findhorn rose 50 ft. above the ordinary level, inundating an area of 20 sq. m.;
the Divie rose 40 ft., and the Lossie flooded all the low ground around Elgin. The floods tore down bridges
and buildings, and obliterated farms and homesteads.

Authorities.—Lachlan Shaw, History of the Province of Moray
(Gordon’s edition, Glasgow, 1882); A Survey of the Province of Moray
(Elgin, 1798); W. Rhind, Sketches of the Past and Present State of
Moray (Edinburgh, 1839); E. Dunbar Dunbar, Documents relating to
the Province of Moray (Edinburgh, 1895); C.A. Gordon, History of the
House of Gordon (Aberdeen, 1890); C. Rampini, History of Moray and
Nairn (Edinburgh, 1897); C. Innes, Elgin, Past and Present (Elgin,
1860); J. Macdonald, “Burghead” (Proceedings of Glasgow
Archaeological Soc.), (1891); Sir T. Dick Lauder, The Wolf of
Badenoch (Glasgow, 1886); An Account of the Great Floods of August
1829 in the Province of Moray and Adjoining Districts (Elgin, 1873).

ELGON, also known as Masawa, an extinct volcano in British East
Africa, cut by 1° N. and 34½° E., forming a vast isolated mass 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 Turkwell, 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. He.)

ELI (Hebrew for “high”? 1 Sam. chaps, i.-iv.), a member of the ancient
priesthood founded in Egypt (1 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 Phinehas, 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 of 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 (1
Sam. iv. 19 sqq.). This name, which popular etymology explained by the
words “the glory is removed (or, stronger, ‘banished’) from Israel” (cf. Hos.
x. 5), should perhaps be altered from I-kābōd (as though “not glory”) to
Jōchebed (Yōkebed, a slight change in the original), the name which
tradition also gave to the 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 Nob (1 Sam. xxi. 1, xxii. 11 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 (1 Kings ii. 27, 35), later writers saw the
fulfilment of the prophecies of judgment which was said to have been
uttered in the days of Eli against his corrupt house (1 Sam. ii. 27 sqq., iii. 11
sqq.).1

See further, Samuel, Books of; and on Eli as a descendant of a
Levite clan (1 Sam. ii 27 sq.), see Levites (§ 3).
(W. R. S.; S. A. C.)

1 On the old views relating to the succession of the priests, according to which the high-
priesthood was diverted from the line of Eleazar and Phinehas into that of Ithamar, see
Robertson Smith, Old Test. in Jewish Church, 2nd ed., p. 266.

ELIAS, of Cortona (c. 1180-1253), disciple of St Francis of Assisi, was
born near Assisi, about 1180, of the working class, but 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 1239 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
excommunication. 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 by Ed. Lempp, Frère Élie de
Cortone (1901), 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 especially the articles by Goetz,
there referred to, in the Hist. Vierteljahrsschrift. 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 Abererch,
Carnarvonshire. In his youth he came under the influence 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.

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 punishment and in his power of dramatic
presentation. As an ecclesiastic 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 (1469-1549), Jewish grammarian, was born at Neustadt
on the Aisch, a place in Bavaria lying between Nuremberg and Würzburg.
He preferred to call himself “Ashkenazi,” 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 15th 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 Württemberg, 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 remarkable period which saw the rise of the Reformation and
gave to the study of the Hebrew Bible and to its language an importance 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 Commentary on Moses
Kimḥi’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, explanation of 712 new Hebrew
vocables, as a supplement to the dictionaries of David Kimḥi and Nathan b.
Yeḥiel, 1542). 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 1536), 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
Kimḥi’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 Historia di Buovo 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 renewed 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.

ÉLIE DE BEAUMONT, JEAN BAPTISTE ARMAND LOUIS
LÉONCE (1798-1874), French geologist, was born at Canon, in Calvados,
on the 25th of September 1798. He was educated at the Lycée Henri IV.
where he took the first prize in mathematics and physics; at the École
Polytechnique, where he stood first at the exit examination in 1819; and at
the École 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 Dufrénoy by Brochant de Villiers, the professor of
geology in the École 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 École des Mines, in succession 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-Général 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. Élie de Beaumont’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 système 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
réseau. 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 Élie 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 Élie de
Beaumont published many important memoirs on the geology of the
country. After his superannuation at the École des Mines he continued to
superintend the issue of the detailed maps almost until his death, which
occurred at Canon on the 21st of September 1874. His academic lectures for
1843-1844 were published in 2 vols., 1845-1849, under the title Leçons de
géologie pratique.

A list of his works was published in the Ann. des Mines, vol. vii.
1875. P. 259.

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 with an abruptness not out of keeping with
his character and work (1 Kings xvii. 1).1 The first and most important part
of his career lay in the reign of Ahab, i.e. during the first half of the 9th
century b.c. He is introduced as predicting the drought2 God was to send
upon Israel as a punishment for the apostasy into which Ahab had been led
by his heathen wife Jezebel. During the first portion of this period Elijah
found a refuge by the brook Cherith, “before the Jordan.” This description
leaves it uncertain 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 morning brought him bread
and flesh.3 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 restored to life in answer to the prayers of the prophet (1
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 of
Israel,” which the prophet boldly flung back upon him who had forsaken
the commandments of the Lord and followed the Baalim.4 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” (1
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 life of 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 a lofty inspiration for the artist. The false prophets were allowed to
invoke their god in whatever manner they pleased. The only interruption
came in the mocking encouragement of Elijah (1 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,5 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 striking contrast to the “vain repetitions” of the false prophets are
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 Kishon (xviii. 40). The deed, though not without

parallel in the Old Testament history, stamps the peculiarly vindictive
character of Elijah’s prophetic mission.6

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 of Judah. Here he left his servant (according to old Jewish
tradition, the widow’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 disappointment in a
prayer for death. By another of those many miraculous interpositions which
occur in his history he was twice supplied with food and drink, in the
strength of which he journeyed forty days and forty nights until he came to
Horeb, where he lodged in a cave.7 A hole “just large enough for a man’s
body” (Stanley), immediately below the summit of Jebel Mūsa, 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 followed the Lord made himself known. A
threefold commission was laid upon him: he was to return to Damascus and
anoint Hazael king of Syria; he was to anoint Jehu, the son of Nimshi, as
king of Israel in place of Ahab; and as his own successor in the prophetic
office he was to anoint Elisha (xix. 15-18).8

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.9 After the call of Elisha the
narrative contains no notice of Elijah for several years, although the LXX.,
by placing 1 Kings xxi. before ch. xx., proceeds 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 vineyard when Ahab
entered to take possession of it, and pronounced upon the king and his
house that awful doom (1 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,”—probably 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 Jehoshaphat, 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. 1). 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. probably a first-born’s
portion, Deut. xxi. 17)10 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. 11). 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 miraculous incidents only, which might be mere excrescences,
but for a series of miraculous events so closely connected and so continuous
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. Mal. 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 Mahommedan
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 20th 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’ Dict. Bib., H. Gunkel, Elias, Yahve u. Baal
(Tübingen, 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 bibliographical information, see W.R. Harper, Amos
and Hosea (Internat. Crit. Comm.), pp. xxxiv.-xlix., and article Hebrew
Religion.
(W. R. S.; S. A. C.)

1 The text is uncertain. According to the LXX., he was a native of Tishbeh in Gilead; a
more natural reading. Klostermann’s conjecture that the original name of his home was
Jabesh-Gilead is attractive but unnecessary. His appearance in the narrative, like
Melchizedek, “without father, without mother” (Heb. vii. 3), gave rise to various rabbinical
traditions, such as that he was Phinehas, the grandson of Aaron, returned to earth, or that he
was an angel in human form.

2 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.

3 The rationalistic view that the word translated “ravens” should be “Arabians” is
improbable. Cheyne’s suggestion that the unknown brook Cherith should be placed to the
south of Judah agrees with Josephus (Ant. viii. 13. 2, “he departed into the southern parts”)
and with 1 Kings xix. 3, 8; “Jordan” may refer to another river, if it be not a gloss; see
Cheyne, Ency. Bib., s.v. “Cherith.”

4 The sudden introduction of Elijah in xvii. 1 may be accounted for by the supposition
that the commencement of the narrative had been omitted by the editor of xvi. 29 sqq.
Hence we are not told the cause of Ahab’s hostility towards Elijah, nor is the allusion to
Jezebel’s 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 his life. Later tradition supposed he was the
captain of 2 Kings i. 13, or that the widow of 2 Kings iv. 1 had been his wife.

5 The definition of time by the stated oblation (xviii. 29, 36) is very noteworthy (cp. 2
Kings iii. 20).

6 It is obvious that a purely rationalistic interpretation of the great sign whereby Jahweh
manifested himself would be out of place. But there is an interesting parallel in the legend
of the kindling of the sacred fire and the igniting of the “thick water” in the time of
Nehemiah (2 Macc. i. 18-36). Elsewhere, there were sacred fires kindled by the aid of
magical invocations (e.g. Hypaepa, Pausanias 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, the ancient King of Israel in the journeyings through the
wilderness.” For the cave, cp. Ex. xxxiii. 22.

8 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,” ad loc.

9 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 1 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).

10 Understood in Eccles. xlviii. 12 (Heb.) to mean that Elisha was twice as great as
Elijah.

ELIJAH WILNA, or Elijah ben Solomon, best known as the Gaon
Elijah of 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 investigations of the 19th 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.
(I. A.)

ELIOT, CHARLES WILLIAM (1834- ), American educationalist,
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 20th of March 1834. He graduated in 1853 at Harvard
College, where he was successively 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 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 (1894) 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 1908 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 he delivered numerous public
addresses, many of which have been reprinted.

See “President Eliot’s Administration,” by different hands, a
summary of his work at Harvard in 1869-1894, in The Harvard
Graduates’ Magazine, vol. 2, pp. 449-504 (Boston, Mass., 1894); and
E. Kuhnemann, Charles W. Eliot, President of Harvard (Boston, 1909).

His son, Charles Eliot (1859-1897), 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, 1902).

ELIOT, GEORGE, the pen-name of the famous English writer, née
Mary Ann (or Marian) Evans (1819-1880), afterwards Mrs J.W. Cross, born
at Arbury Farm, in Warwickshire, on the 22nd 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 received an ordinary education at respectable schools till the age of
seventeen, when her mother’s death, and 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 remained
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 evangelical 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 considerations, 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 consciousness that
most people thought her guilty of a grave mistake, and found her written
words, with their endorsement of traditional 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 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 following 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
extended 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 its vitality not to the portraits of Savonarola or of the heroine, or to its
vigorous pictures of Florentine life in the 15th 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 unforgettable human note.
The Spanish Gypsy (1868), a drama in blank verse, received more public
response than most compositions 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
consideration 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 satisfactory. 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 distinction, 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 Brontë, 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,
Epicureanism 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 impersonal.

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, bitterness, 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—the one wholly without morbidity in any disguise. The
accumulation 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, 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
Deronda 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 Life of George Eliot, edited by J.W. Cross (3 vols.,
1885-1887); George Eliot, by Sir Leslie Stephen, in the “English Men
of Letters” series (1902); by Oscar Browning, “Great Writers” series
(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 residence of 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 difficulties. After many attempts, in 1623 he
succeeded by a clever but dangerous manœuvre in entrapping the famous
pirate John Nutt, who had for years infested the southern coast, inflicting
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 Marshalsea, 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
parliament 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 impeachment to the Lords, and on the
10th 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 declining 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 15th 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 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 latter’s assassination in August, led the attack in the session of
1629 on the ritualists and Arminians.

In February the great question of the right of the king to levy tonnage and
poundage came up for discussion; and on the king ordering an adjournment
of parliament, the speaker, Sir John Finch, was held down in the chair while
Eliot’s resolutions against illegal taxation and innovations in religion were
read to the House by Holles (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 29th of October was removed to the Marshalsea. On the 26th of January
he appeared at the bar of the king’s bench, with Holles 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 Negotium posterorum, an account of the parliament in 1625; The
Monarchie 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 permission 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 condemnation 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 personalities 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 earl 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 Dict. 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,
Cambridge, in 1622. It seems probable that he entered the ministry of the
Established Church, but there is nothing definitely known of him until
1629-1630, 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 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 Propagation of the Gospel in New
England,” which henceforth supported 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 21st 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 Wunneetupanatamwe Up-Biblum God naneeswe Nukkone
Testament kah wonk Wusku Testament-Ne quoshkinnumuk nashpe
Wuttinneumoh 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 published a curious treatise on government entitled The
Christian Commonwealth, in which he found the ideal of government in the
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 Magnalia (London, 1702). For
a good account of his publications in the Indian language see the
chapter on “The Indian Tongue and its Literature,” 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 (ἡ κοίλη
Ἦλις), Pisatis, or the territory of Pisa, and Triphylia, or the country of the
three tribes. (1) 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 on the sea-coast,
whose inhabitants worshipped Hermes under the phallic symbol; Pylus, 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 introduced by the Phoenicians, was
inferior only to that of Palestine. (2) Pisatis extended south from Hollow
Elis to the right bank of the Alpheus, and was divided into eight
departments called after as many towns. Of these Salmone, Heraclea,
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 Macistia 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 close of the 11th century b.c. the Dorians invaded the Peloponnesus, 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 had 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
themselves 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 394, 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
Acrorea 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
Corcyrean Hall, a building in the Dorian style with two façades, 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 399 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); Schiller, Stämme und Staaten Griechenlands; C. Bursian,
Geographie 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 Pleistanus (see Phaedo and Menedemus).

ELISAVETGRAD, a fortress and town of Russia, in the government of
Kherson, 296 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 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 1754 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
Bazardyuzi (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 ft. 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 in 1897 (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.
Cultivation 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 82½ 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 manufacturing
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 government of the same name, 118
m. by rail S.E. of Tiflis and 3½ 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 houses, 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 (1 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. 1), 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 in it (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 contrast 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 destruction of the forty-two children
who mocked him as he was going up to Bethel (2 Kings ii. 23-25)—
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.1 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 (Jewish Church, 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
influence 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.),2 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 himself to be styled “thy son Benhadad.”
Equally remarkable is the very ambiguous nature of Elisha’s reply (viii.
10).3 The most important 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 Jehoahaz the narratives contain no notice
of Elisha, but from the circumstances of his death (xiii. 14-21) it is clear
that he had continued to enjoy the esteem of the dynasty which he had
helped to found. Joash, the grandson of Jehu, waited on him on his death-
bed, and addressed him in the words which he 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 he died. The
explicit statement that he was buried completes the contrast between him
and his greater predecessor.

On the narratives, see 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 they are related
before the fall of the house of Omri. We can distinguish portions of an
historical narrative which speaks of Elisha in 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 connected 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
residence at 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. 11; 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., 9th 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 14th of June, under which date his life is entered in the
Acta sanctorum.

See especially, W.R. Smith, Prophets of Israel (Index, s.v.), and the
literature to Elijah; Kings, Books of; Prophet.
(W. R. S.; S. A. C.)

1 Similarly Elijah enforces respect for the prophetic office in i. 9 sqq. 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. 1); “Go up” is perhaps to be
taken literally (in reference to Elijah’s translation).

2 The method of obtaining water (v. 16 sq.) is that which still gives its name to the Wādi
el-Aḥsā (“valley of water pits”) at the southern end of the Dead Sea (Old Test. Jew. Church,
2nd ed., 147). On the other hand, see Burney, Heb. Text of Kings, p. 270.

3 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. 1 with iv. 38, ‫שבים לפניו‬,—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. 1 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 series. 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.

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 (aḥer “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.
ξήριον, a powder used for drying wounds, from ξηρός, dry), in alchemy,
the medium which would effect the transmutation 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
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 preparation, 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 disappointed 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 initio 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 household, 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 when 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
investigation, 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 archbishop 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 subordinating his conscience to the will of the state, for the

responsibility 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 reconciled 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 17th of November 1558. “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 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 Confession. 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 clear 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 monarchs agreed at heart with James I.’s
aphorism about “no bishop, no king.” It was convenient, too, to profess
Lutheran sympathies, for Lutheranism was now an established, monarchical
and comparatively respectable 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 16th 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 uniformity 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 18th-century 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 protégée.
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
parliament 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 success; 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 Paulet 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 aggressiveness 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 prerogative,
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 Dict. Nat. Biog.
(A. F. P.)

ELIZABETH [PETROVNA] (1709-1762), Empress of Russia, the
daughter of Peter the Great and Martha Skovronskaya, born at
Kolomenskoye, near Moscow, on the 18th of December 1709. Even as a
child her parts were good, if not brilliant, but unfortunately 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 speculations
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 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 Chétardie,
who was plotting to destroy the Austrian influence then dominant at the
Russian court. It is a mistake to suppose, however, that La Chétardie 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’état 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, Armand 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
sympathies 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 noiselessly 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 departments 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 Åbo, 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; reconciled 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 Westminster (January 16, 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 17th of May 1757 the Russian army, 85,000 strong, advanced against

Königsberg. 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 1759 to the end of 1761,
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 determination to promote them at all hazards. She
insisted throughout that the king of Prussia must be rendered harmless to
his neighbours 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 21st 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 Russia and 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 12th

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.
Simultaneously, Elizabeth caused to be conveyed to Louis XV. a
confidential letter in which she proposed the signature of a new treaty of
alliance of a more comprehensive and explicit nature than the preceding
treaties between the two powers, without the knowledge of Austria.
Elizabeth’s object in this mysterious negotiation 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 German 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 Porte. It was finally arranged by the allies that their envoys
at Paris 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 Kolberg on Christmas day O.S. 1761, by
Rumyantsev, was the sole Russian success. Frederick, however, was now at
the last gasp. On the 6th of January 1762, 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 clear. 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 Correspondenz Friedrichs des
Grossen, vols. i.-xxi. (Berlin, 1879, &c.); Colonel Masslowski, Der
siebenjährige Krieg nach russischer Darstellung (Berlin, 1888-1893);
Kazinsierz Waliszewski, La Dernière des Romanov (Paris, 1902).
(R. N. B.)

ELIZABETH [AMÉLIE EUGÉNIE] (1837-1898), consort of Francis
Joseph, emperor of Austria and king of Hungary, was the daughter of Duke
Maximilian Joseph of Bavaria and Louisa Wilhelmina, 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 Ischl 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 Ausgleich
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 Gödöllö, 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 benefactions 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 1889, 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 Alençon, 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 10th of September 1898, and died of
the wound within a few hours. This aimless and dastardly crime completed
the list of misfortunes of the Austrian house, and aroused intense
indignation throughout Europe.

See A. de Burgh, Elizabeth, Empress of Austria, a Memoir (London,
1898); E. Friedmann and J. Paves, Kaiserin Elisabeth (Berlin, 1898);
and the anonymous Martyrdom of an Empress (1899), containing a
quantity of court gossip.

ELIZABETH (1596-1662), 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 1605 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 14th of February 1613 midst great rejoicing and
festivities. The prince and princess entered Heidelberg on the 17th 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 Küstrin, travelling thence to Berlin and Wolfenbüttel,
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 Brunswick, of the 1st earl of Craven, and of
other chivalrous 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 Lützen was followed by that of the elector at Mainz on the 29th 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 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 19th 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, subsequently 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 13th of the same month,
being buried in Westminster Abbey. Her beauty, grace and vivacity
exercised a great charm over her contemporaries, 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 Dict. of Nat. Biography and
authorities there collected; Five Stuart Princesses, ed. by R.S. Rait
(1902); Briefe der Elizabeth Stuart ... an ... den Kurfürsten Carl
Ludwig von der Pfalz, by A. Wendland (Bibliothek des literarischen
Vereins, 228, Stuttgart, 1902); “Elizabeth Stuart,” by J.O. Opel, in
Sybel’s Historische Zeitschrift, xxiii. 289; Thomason Tracts (Brit.
Mus.), E., 138 (14), 122 (12), 118 (40), 119 (18). Important 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
15th 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
Hammerstein, 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 Pensées d’une reine (Paris, 1882), a
German version of which is entitled Vom Amboss (Bonn, 1890). Cuvinte
Sufletesci, religious meditations in Rumanian (Bucharest, 1888), was also
translated into German (Bonn, 1890), under the name of Seelen-Gespräche.
Several of the works of “Carmen Sylva” were written in collaboration with
Mite Kremnitz, one of her maids of honour, who was born at Greifswald 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 zwei 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 Pêcheur d’Islande, and of Paul de St Victor’s dramatic criticisms
Les Deux Masques (Paris, 1881-1884); and in particular The Bard of the
Dimbovitza, a fine English version by “Carmen Sylva” and Alma Strettell
of Helène 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
Biographie (Leipzig, 1903); and, for a full bibliography, G. Bengescu,
Carmen Sylva—bibliographie et extraits de ses œuvres (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 Caversham,
near Reading, and Hampton Court, but were again separated by Charles’s
imprisonment at Carisbrooke Castle. On the 21st 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 29th 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
proficiency in Greek, Hebrew and Latin, as well as in Italian and French,
and several books were dedicated to her, including the translation of the
Electra 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 [Élisabeth Philippine Marie Hélène 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 20th of June 1792, and with whom she was arrested at
Varennes. 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 émigrés with funds, and of
encouraging the resistance of the royal troops on the 10th of August 1792,
she was condemned to death, and executed on the 10th 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 Mémoires de Madame Élisabeth (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 Comte A.F.C. Ferrand, Éloge historique de
Madame Élisabeth (1814, containing 94 letters; 2nd ed., 1861,
containing additional letters, but correspondence mutilated); Du Fresne
de Beaucourt, Étude sur Madame Élisabeth (Paris, 1864); A. de
Beauchesne, Vie de Madame Élisabeth (1869); La comtesse
d’Armaillé, Madame Élisabeth (Paris, 1886); Madame d’Arvor,
Madame Élisabeth (Paris, 1898); and Hon. Mrs Maxwell-Scott,
Madame Elizabeth of France (1908).

ELIZABETH, SAINT (1207-1231), daughter of Andrew II., king of
Hungary (d. 1235), by his first wife, Gertrude of Andechs-Meran (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 mass 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 house 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 persecutor 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 19th 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. Calderon’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. § 1 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 et
nudavit) in order to follow Him naked, in the steps of poverty. A literal
interpretation of this passage is not impossible; for ecstatic mystics of all
ages have indulged in a like κενώσις, 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
Apolda (b. 1228), Caesarius of Heisterbach (d. c. 1240), Conrad of
Marburg and others (see Potthast, Bibl. Hist. Med. Aev. p. 1284). A
metrical life in German exists by Johann Rothe (d. c. 1440), chaplain to
the Landgravine Anne of Thuringia (Potthast, p. 985). L’Histoire de
Sainte Élisabeth de Hongrie, by Montalembert, was published at Paris
in 1836. Her life has also supplied the materials for a dramatic poem by
Charles Kingsley, 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; (1900) 52,130, of whom 14,770 were
foreign-born and 1139 were negroes; (1910 census) 73,409. It is served by
the Pennsylvania, the Lehigh 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 most 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 1905; among the other manufactures of Elizabeth are foundry

and machine shop products (value in 1905, $3,887,139), wire, oil (value in
1905, $2,387,656), refined and smelted copper, the output of railway repair
shops, edge tools and lager beer. The value of the manufactured products
was $10,489,364 in 1890; $22,861,375 (factory product) in 1900; 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 government of the
province, and the legislature sat here occasionally until 1790. In the home
of the Rev. Jonathan Dickinson (1688-1747), its 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 by the legislature in 1789 and repealed in 1790, and
Elizabeth was chartered as a city in 1855.

See E.F. Hatfield, 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 16th century by the purer Italian style introduced by Inigo
Jones. It responds to the Cinque-Cento period in Italy, the François 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 on
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 17th of
October 1801, the son of a spectacle manufacturer. Apprenticed to his
uncles, 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 Birmingham 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, subsequently acquiring the rights of other
processes and improvements. 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 Ælla, the 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 king 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 together 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 as having brought
about the Danish invasion of Northumbria by cruel and unjust actions.

See The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, edited by C. Plummer (Oxford,
1892-1899); Bede, Historiae ecclesiasticae, edited by C. Plummer
(Oxford, 1896); Henry of Huntingdon, Historia Anglorum, edited by T.
Arnold, Rolls Series (London, 1879); Asser, De rebus gestis Aelfredi,
edited by W.H. Stevenson (Oxford, 1904); J.R. Green, The Making of
England (London, 1897), and the Dictionary of National Biography,
vol. i. (London, 1895).

ELLAND, an urban district in the Elland parliamentary division of
Yorkshire, England, on the Calder, 2½ m. S. of Halifax by the Lancashire &
Yorkshire railway. Pop. (1901) 10,412. The church of St Mary is Decorated
and Perpendicular. Cotton-mills, 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
Crosland 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 Lockwood and Quarmby. The children of these families
were educated 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, 1st Baron (1750-1818),
English judge, was born on the 16th 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 Peterhouse, 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, he 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 afterwards was returned to the House of
Commons as member for Newtown in the Isle of Wight. In 1802 he
succeeded Lord Kenyon 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 especially were reckoned of high authority. He was harsh
and overbearing 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 Charles 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 fame. These
were John Law (1745-1810), bishop of Elphin; Thomas Law (1759-1834),
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 (1790-1876), chancellor
of the diocese of Lichfield.

ELLENBOROUGH, EDWARD LAW, Earl of (1790-1871), the eldest
son of the 1st Lord Ellenborough, was born on the 8th of September 1790.
He was educated at Eton and St John’s College, Cambridge. He represented
the subsequently disfranchised 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 Wellington, 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. Ellenborough 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 15th of March 1842, as in his
memorandum for the queen dated the 18th, 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 Ellenborough 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 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 1st of
November 1845, and 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 control 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 government 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 government 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
appointment 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, Ellenborough 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 conquest 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 15th 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, 1st Earl of (1800-1857), born
in London on the 1st of January 1800, was the second son of the 1st 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 a lord of the

treasury in 1827, he held 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 translations 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 Mediterranean 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 secured for him the position of rector of Aberdeen
University in 1841. Lord Ellesmere was a munificent and yet discriminating
patron of artists. To the splendid collection of pictures which he inherited
from his great-uncle, the 3rd duke of Bridgewater, he made numerous
additions, and he built a noble gallery to which the public were allowed free
access. Lord Ellesmere 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 18th of February 1857. He was
succeeded by his son (1823-1862) as 2nd earl, and his grandson (b. 1847) as
3rd earl.

ELLESMERE, a market town in the Oswestry parliamentary division of
Shropshire, England, on the main line of the Cambrian railway, 182 m.
N.W. from London. Pop. of urban district (1901) 1945. It is prettily situated

on the west shore of the mere or small lake from which it takes its name,
while in the neighbourhood are other sheets of water, as Blake Mere, Cole
Mere, White Mere, 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 hall contains a library and a
natural history collection. The college is a large boys’ school. The town is
an important agricultural centre. Ellesmere canal, a famous work of Thomas
Telford, connects the Severn with the Mersey, crossing the Vale of
Llangollen by an immense aqueduct, 336 yds. long and 127 ft. high.

The manor of Ellesmere (Ellesmeles) belonged before the Conquest to
Earl Edwin of Mercia, 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. Ellesmere owed its
early importance to its position on the Welsh borders and to its castle, which
was in ruins, however, in 1349. While Ellesmere 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 1859. In
1221 Henry III. granted Llewellyn, prince of Wales, a market on Thursdays
in Ellesmere. The inquisition taken in 1383 after the death of Roger le
Straunge (Lord Strange), lord of Ellesmere, 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 hold a market every Thursday and

a fair on the 3rd of November. Since 1792 both have been discontinued.
The commerce of Ellesmere has always been chiefly agricultural.

ELLICE (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 are
disposed in nine clusters extending over a distance of about 400 m. in the
direction from N.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 Mitchell, Nurakita 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 some
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 growing 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 subsidence.

See Geographical Journal, passim; and Atoll of Funafuti: Borings
into a Coral Reef (Report 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 13th
century as “one of the famous cities of the Deccan.” Though tributary to the
Mahommedans after 1294, it remained under Hindu administration till
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 eventually 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 séances
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 stethoscope. He wrote a
translation of Blumenbach’s Institutiones 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 State 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 College 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, Yorkshire, on the 17th
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 (12th 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 these, are pointed out in a long and friendly letter (30th
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 injustice, are vigorous, simple and full of vivid
description. In 1833-1835 he published The Splendid Village; Corn-Law
Rhymes, and other Poems (3 vols.), which included “The Village Patriarch”

(1829), “The Ranter,” an unsuccessful drama, “Keronah,” and other pieces.
He contributed verses from time to time to Tait’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 the corn laws. He retired in 1841 with a small fortune and settled at Great
Houghton, near Barnsley, where he died on the 1st of December 1849. In
1850 appeared two volumes of More 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. ἔλλειψις, a deficiency, ἐλλείπειν, 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 plano are generally more
useful; of these the most important are: (1) the ellipse is the conic section
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. 1)
be the directrix, S the focus,
and X the foot of the
perpendicular from S to KX. Fig. 1.
If SX be divided at A so that
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 conics or analytically.
The semi-major axis is generally denoted by a, and the semi-minor axis
by b, and we have the relation b² = a² (1 − e²). Also a² = 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 PN² = 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 perpendiculars 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 ax² + 2hxy + by² + 2gx + 2fy +
c = 0 represents an ellipse when ab > h²; if the centre of the curve be
the origin, the equation is a¹x² + 2h¹xy + b¹y² = C¹, and if in addition a
pair of conjugate diameters are the axes, the equation is further

simplified to Ax² + By² = C. The simplest form is x²/a² + y²/b² = 1, 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 φ, and the ordinate b sin φ, since on eliminating φ between
x = a cos φ and y = b sin φ we obtain the equation to the ellipse. The
angle φ 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 θ is x cos θ/a + y sin θ/b = 1, and to
the normal ax/cos θ − by/sin θ = a² − b².

The area of the ellipse is πab, where a, b are the semi-axes; this
result may be deduced by regarding the ellipse as the orthogonal
projection of a circle, or by means of the calculus. The perimeter 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 = π(a + b) makes the perimeter about
1/200th too small; s =π√(a² + b²) about 1/200th too great; 2s = π(a + b)
+ π√(a² + b²) 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 involution
solves such constructions as: 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
is given. A focus or directrix is equal to two conditions; hence such
problems as: given a focus and three points; a focus, two points and
one tangent; and a focus, one point and two tangents are soluble (very

conveniently by employing the principle of reciprocation). Of practical
importance are the following constructions:—(1) Given the axes; (2)
given the major axis and the foci; (3) given the focus, eccentricity and
directrix; (4) to construct an ellipse (approximately) by means of
circular arcs.

(1) If the axes be given, we may avail ourselves of several
constructions, (a) Let AA′, BB′ be the axes intersecting at right angles
in a point C. Take a strip of paper or rule and mark off from a point P,
distances Pa and Pb equal respectively to CA and CB. If now the strip
be moved so that the point a is always on the minor axis, and the point
b on the major axis, the point P describes the ellipse. This is known as
the trammel construction.

(b) Let AA′, BB′ be the axes as before; describe on each as diameter
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 points of intersection with the minor circle
draw lines parallel to the major axis. The intersections of the lines
drawn from corresponding points are points on the ellipse.

(2) If the major axis and foci 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 AA′
be the axis and S, S′ the foci. Take a piece of thread of length AA′, 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,
KX the directrix, X being the foot 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 = Fig. 2.

angle NSA′. Let P be the
intersection of the line SL with the line RAM, 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 axes be given, the curve can be approximately constructed
by circular arcs 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 HA¹ will cut the
circular arc in J. Let JO intersect the major axis in O1. Then with centre

O1 and radius OJ = OA¹, describe an arc. By reflecting the two arcs
thus described over the centre the ellipse is approximately described.

ELLIPSOID, a quadric surface whose sections are ellipses. Analytically,
it has for its equation x²/a² + y²/b² + z²/c² = 1, a, b, c being its axes; the
name is also given to the solid contained by this surface (see Geometry:
Analytical). The solids and surfaces 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 are 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. (See also Compression.)

ELLIS (originally Sharpe), ALEXANDER JOHN (1814-1890), English
philologist, mathematician, musician and writer on phonetics, was born at
Hoxton on the 14th of June 1814. He was educated at Shrewsbury, Eton,
and Trinity College, Cambridge, 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
considerable additions) Helmholtz’s Sensations of Tone as a physiological
Basis for the Theory of Music (2nd 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 28th 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 continued 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 the Early
English Poets appeared in 1790; and this was followed by Specimens of
Early English Metrical Romances (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 10th 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 29th 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 15th 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
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 manuscripts 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 1893 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,
the astrological poet. In 1891 he published Noctes Manilianae, a series of
dissertations on the Astronomica, with emendations. He has also treated
Avianus, Velleius Paterculus and the Christian poet Orientius, whom he
edited for the Vienna Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum. He edited the
Ibis of Ovid, the Aetna of the younger Lucilius, and contributed to the
Anecdota Oxoniensia 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, occupying
various stations in succession, until 1824, when he was compelled to return
home on account of the state of his wife’s health. Though the period of his
residence in the islands was thus comparatively 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 19th
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 enabled 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 resuming 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 watchmaker. 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 bankruptcy 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
10th 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 series 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
architectural 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. In 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 for military purposes during the War of Independence. In 1779
he again sat in the assembly, this time representing Hartford. From 1777 to
1783 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
Constitution. From 1780 to 1785 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 suggested 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 became 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 condemned 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
Addresses (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 3¾ m. from its mouth), about 30 m. S.E. of Bangor. Pop. (1890)
4804; (1900) 4297 (189 foreign-born); (1910) 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,
shoes, 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 here. The city is the port of entry for the
Frenchman’s Bay customs district, but its foreign trade is unimportant.
Ellsworth was first settled in 1763 and for some time was called New

Bowdoin; but when it was incorporated as a town in 1800 the 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 Württemberg, on
the Jagst, 12 m. S.S.E. from Crailsheim on the railway to Goldshöfe. 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 Schönenberg, 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 industries 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 Ellwangen 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, in 1555, was raised to the dignity of a prince of the Empire.
The provostship was secularized in 1803 and its territories were assigned to
Württemberg. The town of Ellwangen, which grew up round the abbey and

received the status of a town about the middle of the 14th century, was until
1803 the capital of the provostship.

See Seckler, Beschreibung der gefürsteten Probstei Ellwangen
(Stuttgart, 1864); Beschreibung des Oberamts Ellwangen, 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 (1639-1714), 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 are 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 Penningtons 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 afterwards 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 1705 and 1709. He also published some volumes of
poems, among them a Davideis in five books. He died on the 1st of March
1714.

The History of the Life of Thomas Ellwood: written by his own hand
(1714) has been many times reprinted.

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
situations, attaining a height of 60 to 100, and in some few cases as much as

130 or 150 ft. The branches are numerous and spreading, 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 adornment 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 120 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 settlement of Boston, and at the time of its

destruction by the storm of the 15th 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 1118 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,
Historia saracenica, and from this a French translation was made by
Wattier as L’Histoire mahométane (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 (q.v.), 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 en 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 15th 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 of St Augustine at Canterbury, which has been edited by C.
Hardwick for the Rolls Series (1858); and a Liber metricus de Henrico V.,
edited by C.A. Cole in the Memorials of Henry V. (1858). It is very probable
that Elmham wrote the famous Gesta Henrici Quinti, 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 et
Gesta Henrici V., which was attributed to him by T. Hearne and others.

See C.L. Kingsford, Henry V. (1901).

ELMINA, a town on the Gold Coast, British West Africa, in 5° 4′ N., 1°
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 part 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 19th 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 18th century, but the figure is probably exaggerated. Since
1900 the bulk of the export trade in gold has been transferred to Sekondi
(q.v.). 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. (1890) 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 house and other
county buildings, the Elmira orphans’ home, the Steele memorial library,
home for the aged, the Arnot-Ogden memorial hospital, the Elmira free
academy, and the Railway Commercial 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
1900, $8,558,786, 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 settlement 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 Krückau, 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 1818 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
Acharnians 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. (1908).

ELNE, a town of south-western France in the department of Pyrénées-
Orientales, 10 m. S.S.E. of Perpignan by rail. Pop. (1906) 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 6th 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 12th 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 Constantine 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 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° 11′ 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 17th 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 bas-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’œuvre.
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 1st 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 Vita S. Eligii auctore Audoeno
were published by L. de Montigny (Paris, 1626), by C. Barthélemy in
Études hist., litt. 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 Noviomensis,” and Ulysse Chevalier,
Rép. 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 Fé, 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 Galveston, 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 connected 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. government, 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 statesman
and historian, fourth son of the 11th Baron Elphinstone in the peerage of
Scotland, was born in 1779. Having received an appointment in the civil
service of the East India Company, of which one of his uncles was a
director, he reached Calcutta in the beginning of 1796. After filling several
subordinate 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 Elphinstone’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 chiefly owing to his assuming
the command at an important crisis during the battle of Kirkee.

The peshwa being driven from his throne, his territories were annexed to
the British dominions, and Elphinstone was nominated commissioner to
administer them. He discharged the responsible task with rare judgment and
ability. In 1819 he was appointed lieutenant-governor of Bombay and held
this post till 1827, his principal achievement being the compilation of the
“Elphinstone code.” He may fairly be regarded as the founder of the system
of state 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 connexion with the Bombay presidency was appropriately
commemorated in the endowment of the Elphinstone College by the native
communities, and in the erection of a marble 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 Account of the Kingdom of Cabul and its Dependencies in
Persia and India (1815). Soon after his arrival in England he commenced
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 20th of November 1859.

See J.S. Cotton, Mountstuart Elphinstone (“Rulers of India” series),
(1892); T.E. Colebrooke, Life of Mountstuart Elphinstone (1884); and
G.W. Forrest, Official Writings of Mountstuart Elphinstone (1884).

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 he 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 his 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
Aberdonense. 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 Scotichronicon, nor did he write the
Lives of Scottish Saints.

See Hector Boece, Murthlacensium et Aberdonensium episcoporum
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 by 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. (1890) 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 Guthrie. 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