The Nuttall Encyclopaedia Part 32

AQUA'RIUS, the Water-bearer, 11th sign of the Zodiac, which the sun enters Jan. 21.

AQUAVIVA, a general of the Jesuits of high authority (1543-1615).

A'QUILA (20), capital of the province of Abruzzo Ulteriora, on the Alterno, founded by Barbarossa; a busy place.

A'QUILA, a Judaised Greek of Sinope, in Pontus, executed a literal translation of the Old Testament into Greek in the interest of Judaism versus Christianity in the first half of the 2nd century A.D.

A'QUILA, GASPAR, a friend of Luther who aided him in the translation of the Bible.

AQUILEIA, an Italian village, 22 m. W. of Trieste, once a place of great importance, where several councils of the Church were held.

AQUI'NAS, THOMAS, the Angelic Doctor, or Doctor of the Schools, an Italian of n.o.ble birth, studied at Naples, became a Dominican monk despite the opposition of his parents, sat at the feet of Albertus Magnus, and went with him to Paris, was known among his pupils as the "Dumb Ox," from his stubborn silence at study, prelected at his Alma Mater and elsewhere with distinguished success, and being invited to a.s.sist the Council at Lyons, fell sick and died. His "Summa Theologiae,"

the greatest of his many works, is a masterly production, and to this day of standard authority in the Romish Church. His writings, which fill 17 folio vols., along with those of Duns Scotus, his rival, const.i.tute the high-water mark of scholastic philosophy and the watershed of its divergence into the PHILOSOPHICO-SPECULATIVE THOUGHT on the one hand, and the ETHICO-PRACTICAL OR REALISM OF MODERN TIMES on the other, q. v. (1226-1274).

AQUITAINE', a division of ancient Gaul between the Garonne and the Pyrenees, was from the time of Henry II. till 1453 an appanage of the English crown.

ARABELLA STUART, a cousin of King James I., the victim all her days of jealousy and state policy, suspected of aspiring to the crown on the death of Queen Elizabeth, was shut up in the Tower of London, where she died bereft of reason in 1615 at the age of 38.

ARABESQUE, an ornamentation introduced by the Moors, consisting of imaginary, often fantastic, mathematical or vegetable forms, but exclusive of the forms of men and animals.

ARA'BI, AHMED PASHA, leader of an insurrectionary movement in Egypt in 1882; he claimed descent from the Prophet; banished to Ceylon; _b_.

1839.

ARABIA (12,000), the most westerly peninsula of Asia and the largest in the world, being one-third the size of the whole of Europe, consisting of (_a_) a central plateau with pastures for cattle, and fertile valleys; (_b_) a ring of deserts, the Nefud in the N., stony, the Great Arabian, a perfect Sahara, in the S., sandy, said sometimes to be 600 ft. deep, and the Dahna between; and (_c_) stretches of coast land, generally fertile on the W. and S.; is divided into eight territories; has no lakes or rivers, only wadies, oftenest dry; the climate being hot and arid, has no forests, and therefore few wild animals; a trading country with no roads or railways, only caravan routes, yet the birthland of a race that threatened at one time to sweep the globe, and of a religion that has been a life-guidance to wide-scattered millions of human beings for over twelve centuries of time.

ARABIA FELIX, the W. coast of Arabia, contains YEMEN and EL HEJAZ (q. v.), and is subject to Turkey.

ARABIAN DESERT. See ARABIA.

ARABIAN NIGHTS, or the Thousand and One Nights, a collection of tales of various origin and date, traceable in their present form to the middle of the 15th century, and first translated into French by Galland in 1704. The thread on which they are strung is this: A Persian monarch having made a vow that he would marry a fresh bride every night and sacrifice her in the morning, the vizier's daughter obtained permission to be the first bride, and began a story which broke off at an interesting part evening after evening for a thousand and one nights, at the end of which term the king, it is said, released her and spared her life.

ARABS, THE, "a n.o.ble-gifted people, swift-handed, deep-hearted, something most agile, active, yet most meditative, enthusiastic in their character; a people of wild, strong feelings, and iron restraint over these. In words too, as in action, not a loquacious people, taciturn rather, but eloquent, gifted when they do speak, an earnest, truthful kind of men, of Jewish kindred indeed, but with that deadly terrible earnestness of the Jews they seem to combine something graceful, brilliant, which is not Jewish." Such is Carlyle's opinion of the race from whom Mahomet sprang, as given in his "Heroes."

ARACAN. See ARAKAN.

ARACH'NE, a Lydian maiden, who excelled in weaving, and whom Athena changed into a spider because she had proudly challenged her ability to weave as artistic a work; she had failed in the compet.i.tion, and previously hanged herself in her despair.

ARAD (42), a fortified town in Hungary, seat of a bishop, on the right bank of the Maros; manufactures tobacco, trades in cattle and corn.

ARAF, the Mohammedan sheol or borderland between heaven and h.e.l.l for those who are from incapacity either not morally bad or morally good.

ARAFAT', a granite hill E. of Mecca, a place of pilgrimage as the spot where Adam received his wife after 200 years separation from her on account of their disobedience to the Lord in deference to the suggestion of Satan.

AR'AGO, FRANcOIS, an eminent physicist and astronomer, born in the S. of France, entered the Polytechnic School of Paris when seventeen, elected a member of the Academy of Sciences at the early age of twenty-three, nominated Director of the Observatory in 1830, was member of the Provisional Government in 1848, refused to take the oath to Louis Napoleon after the _coup d'etat_, would rather resign his post at the Observatory, but was retained, and at his death received a public funeral (1786-1853).

ARAGO, JACQUES, a brother of the preceding, a litterateur and a traveller, author of a "Voyage Round the World" (1790-1855).

AR'AGON (925), a territory in the NE. of Spain, traversed by the Ebro, and divided as you proceed southward into the provinces of Huesca, Saragossa, and Teruel, mountainous in the N.; with beautiful fertile valleys, rather barren, in the S; was a kingdom till 1469.

ARAGUAY, an affluent of the Tocantins, in Brazil, which it joins after a course of 1000 m., augmented by subsidiary streams.

ARAKAN (671), a strip of land in British Burmah, on the E. of the Bay of Bengal, 400 m. long and from 90 to 15 m. broad, a low, marshy country; produces and exports large quant.i.ties of rice, as well as sugar and hemp. The natives belong to the Burman stock, and are of the Buddhist faith, though there is a sprinkling of Mohammedans among them.

ARAL, THE SEA OF, a lake in Turkestan, 265 m. long and 145 broad, larger than the Irish Sea, 150 m. E. of the Caspian; has no outlet, shallow, and is said to be drying up.

ARAM, EUGENE, an English school-usher of scholarly attainments, convicted of murder years after the act and executed 1759, to whose fate a novel of Bulwer Lytton's and a poem of Hood's have lent a romantic and somewhat fict.i.tious interest.

ARAMaeA, the territories lying to NE. of Palestine, the inhabitants of which spoke a Semitic dialect called Aramaic, and improperly Chaldee.

ARAMA'IC, the language of Palestine in the days of Christ, a Semitic dialect that has now almost entirely died out.

ARAMae'ANS, a generic name given to the Semitic tribes that dwelt in the NE. of Palestine, also to those that dwelt at the mouths of the Euphrates and the Tigris.

ARAN, VAL D', a Pyrenean valley, source of the Garonne, and one of the highest of the Pyrenees.

ARAN ISLANDS, three islands with antique relics across the mouth of Galway Bay, to which they form a breakwater.