ally
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 God 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 KURFUeRSTS, 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 ca