The Nuttall Encyclopaedia Part 181

EKATERINBURG (37), a Russian town on the Isset, on the E. side of the Ural Mountains, of the mining industry in which it is the chief centre; has various manufactures, and a trade in the cutting and sorting of precious stones.

EKRON, a town in N. Palestine, 30 m. N. from Gaza and 9 m. from the sea.

ELAINE, a lady of the court of King Arthur in love with Lancelot, and whose story is related by Malory in his "History" and by Tennyson in his "Idylls of the King."

ELATERIUM, a drug obtained from the mucus of the fruit of the squirting cuc.u.mber; is a most powerful purgative, and was known to the ancients.

ELBA, a small and rocky island in the Mediterranean between Corsica and Tuscany, with a bold precipitous coast; belongs to Italy; has trade in fish, fruits, and iron ore; famous as Napoleon's place of exile from May 1814 to February 1815.

ELBE, the most important river in N. Germany; rises in the Riesengebirge, in Austria, flows NW. through Germany, and enters the North Sea at Cuxhaven, 725 m. long, navigable 520 m.; abounds in fish.

ELBERFELD (126), an important manufacturing commercial centre, 16 m.

NE. of Dusseldorf; noted for its textiles and dye-works.

ELBOEUF (21), a town on the Seine, 75 m. NW. of Paris; has flouris.h.i.+ng manufactures in cloths, woollens, &c.

ELBURZ, a lofty mountain range in N. Persia, S. of the Caspian; also the name of the highest peak in the Caucasus (18,571 ft.).

ELDER, a name given to certain office-bearers in the Presbyterian Church, a.s.sociated with the minister in certain spiritual functions short of teaching and administering sacraments; their duties embrace the general oversight of the congregation, and are of a wider nature than those of the deacons, whose functions are confined strictly to the secular interests of the church; they are generally elected by the church members, and ordained in the presence of the congregation; their term of office is in some cases for a stated number of years, but more generally for life.

ELDON, JOHN SCOTT, LORD, a celebrated English lawyer, born at Newcastle, of humble parentage; educated at Oxford for the Church, but got into difficulties through a runaway marriage; he betook himself to law, rose rapidly in his profession, and, entering Parliament, held important legal offices under Pitt; was made a Baron and Lord Chancellor, 1801, an office which he held for 26 years; retired from public life in 1835, and left a large fortune at his death; was noted for the shrewd equity of his judgments and his delay in delivering them (1751-1838).

EL DORADO (lit. the Land of Gold), a country which Orellana, the lieutenant of Pizzaro, pretended to have discovered in S. America, between the Amazon and Orinoco, and which he represented as abounding in gold and precious gems; now a region of purely imaginary wealth.

ELEANOR, queen of Edward I. of England and sister of ALFONSO X. (q. v.) of Castile, surnamed the Wise, accompanied her husband to the Crusade in 1269, and is said to have saved him by sucking the poison from a wound inflicted by a poisoned arrow; was buried at Westminster (1244-1290).

ELEATICS, a school of philosophy in Greece, founded by Xenophanes of Elia, and of which Parmenides and Zeno, both of Elia, were the leading adherents and advocates, the former developing the system and the latter completing it, the ground-principle of which was twofold--the affirmation of the unity, and the negative of the diversity, of being--in other words, the affirmation of pure being as alone real, to the exclusion of everything finite and merely phenomenal. See "SARTOR," BK. I. CHAP.

8.

ELECTION, THE DOCTRINE OF, the doctrine that the salvation of a man depends on the election of G.o.d for that end, of which there are two chief phases--the one is election _to be_ Christ's, or unconditional election, and the other that it is election _in_ Christ, or conditional election.

ELECTORS, THE, or KURFuRSTS, OF GERMANY, German princes who enjoyed the privilege of disposing of the imperial crown, ranked next the emperor, and were originally six in number, but grew to eight and finally nine; three were ecclesiastical--the Archbishops of Mayence, Cologne, and Treves, and three secular--the Electors of Saxony, the Palatinate, and Bohemia, to which were added at successive periods the Electors of Brandenburg, of Bavaria, and Hanover. "There never was a tenth; and the Holy Roman Empire, as it was called, which was a grand object once, but had gone about in a superannuated and plainly crazy state some centuries, was at last put out of pain by Napoleon, August 6, 1806, and allowed to cease from the world."

ELECTRA (i. e. the Bright One), an ocean nymph, the mother of ISIS (q. v.).

ELECTRA, the daughter of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra, who, with her brother Orestes, avenged the death of her father on his murderers.

ELECTRIC LIGHT, a brilliant white light due to positive and negative currents rus.h.i.+ng together between two points of carbon or (the "incandescent" light) to the intense heat in a solid body, caused by an electric current pa.s.sing through it.

ELECTRICITY, the name given to a subtle agent called the electric fluid, latent in all bodies, and first evolved by friction, and which may manifest itself, under certain conditions, in brilliant flashes of light, or, when in contact with animals, in nervous shocks more or less violent.

It is of two kinds, negative and positive, and as such exhibits itself in the polarity of the magnet, when it is called MAGNETIC (q. v.), and is excited by chemical action, when it is called VOLTAIC (q. v.).

ELEGY, a song expressive of sustained earnest yearning, or mild sorrow after loss.

ELEMENTAL SPIRITS, a general name given in the Middle Ages to salamanders, undines, sylphs, and gnomes, spirits superst.i.tiously believed to have dominion respectively over, as well as to have had their dwelling in, the four elements--fire, water, air, and earth.

ELEMENTS, originally the four forms of matter so deemed--fire, air, earth, and water, and afterwards the name for those substances that cannot be resolved by chemical a.n.a.lysis, and which are now found to amount to sixty-seven.

ELEPHANT, a genus of mammals, of which there are two species, the Indian and the African; the latter attains a greater size, and is hunted for the sake of its tusks, which may weigh as much as 70 lbs.; the former is more intelligent, and easily capable of being domesticated; the white elephant is a variety of this species.

ELEPHANT, ORDER OF THE WHITE, a Danish order of knighthood, restricted to 30 knights, the decoration of which is an elephant supporting a tower; it was inst.i.tuted by Canute IV., king of Denmark, at the end of the 12th century.

ELEPHANTA, an island 6 m. in circuit in Bombay harbour, so called from its colossal figure of an elephant which stood near the landing-place; it contains three temples cut out of solid rock, and covered with sculptures, which, along with the figure at the landing, are rapidly decaying.

ELEPHANTIASIS, a peculiar skin disease, accompanied with abnormal swelling; so called because the skin becomes hard and stiff like an elephant's hide; attacks the lower limbs and s.c.r.o.t.u.m; is chiefly confined to India and other tropical countries.

ELEPHANTINE, a small island below the first cataract of the Nile; contains interesting monuments and ruins of the ancient Roman and Egyptian civilisations.

ELEUSINIAN MYSTERIES, rites, initiation into which, as religiously conducive to the making of good men and good citizens, was compulsory on every free-born Athenian, celebrated annually at Eleusis in honour of Demeter and Persephone, and which lasted nine days.

ELEUSIS, a town in ancient Attica, NW. of Athens, with a temple for the wors.h.i.+p of Demeter, the largest in Greece; designed by the architect of the PARTHENON (q. v.).

ELEUTHERIA, the G.o.ddess of liberty, as wors.h.i.+pped in ancient Greece.

ELF-ARROWS, arrow-heads of flint used in hunting and war by the aborigines of the British Isles and of Europe generally, as they still are among savages elsewhere; derived their name from the superst.i.tious belief that they were used by the fairies to kill cattle and sometimes human beings in their mischief-joy; they were sometimes worn as talismans, occasionally set in silver, as a charm against witchcraft.

ELGIN or MORAY (43), a northern Scottish county, fronting the Moray Firth and lying between Banff and Nairn, mountainous in the S. but flat to the N., watered by the Spey, Lossie, and Findhorn; agriculture, stone-quarrying, distilling, and fis.h.i.+ng are the staple industries; has some imposing ruins and interesting antiquities.