The Nuttall Encyclopaedia Part 190

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

eTIENNE, ST., (133), an important French town, capital of the dep.

of the Loire, on the Furens, 35 m. SW. of Lyons; chief seat of the iron-works of France; also has noted ribbon factories.

ETIVE, a sea-loch in Argylls.h.i.+re, Scotland, is an inland extension of the Firth of Lorne, about 20 m. in length, and varying in breadth from 2 to m.; the mountain scenery along the sh.o.r.es grandly picturesque; the river which bears the same name rises in Rannoch Moor, and joins the loch after a SW. course of 15 m.; both loch and river afford salmon-fis.h.i.+ng.

ETNA, a volcanic mountain on the E. coast of Sicily, 10,840 ft.

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

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

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

ETRURIA, the ancient Roman name of a region in Italy, W. of the Apennines from the Tiber to the Macra in the N.; inhabited by the Etruscans, a primitive people of Italy; at one time united in a confederation of twelve States; gradually absorbed by the growing Roman power, and who were famous for their artistic work in iron and bronze.

Many of the Etruscan cities contain interesting remains of their early civilised state; but their entire literature, supposed to have been extensive, has perished, and their language is only known through monumental inscriptions. Their religion was polytheistic, but embraced a belief in a future life. There is abundant evidence that they had attained to a high degree of civilisation; the status of women was high, the wife ranking with the husband; their buildings still extant attest their skill as engineers and builders; vases, mirrors, and coins of fine workmans.h.i.+p have been found in their tombs, and jewellery which is scarcely rivalled; while the tombs themselves are remarkable for their furnis.h.i.+ngs of chairs, ornaments, decorations, &c., showing that they regarded these sanctuaries more as dwellings of departed spirits than as sepulchres of the dead.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

EUDOXUS OF CNIDUS, a Grecian astronomer, was a pupil of Plato, and afterwards studied in Egypt; said to have introduced a 365 day year into Greece; flourished in the 4th century B.C.

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

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

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

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