.
EMILE, the hero of a philosophic romance by Rousseau of the same
name, in which the author expounds his views on education, and presents
his reasons, with his ideal of what, according to him, a good education
is, a theory practically adopted by many would-be educationists with
indifferent fruit.
EMIR, a title bestowed on the descendants of Mahomet's daughter
Fatima, the word denoting a "prince" or "ruler"; has lost this its
primary meaning; the emirs, of whom there are large numbers in Turkey,
enjoying no privileges save the sole right to wear a green turban, the
supposed favourite colour of Mahomet, though they hold a high social
position; the title is also given to chieftains of N. Africa.
EMMET, ROBERT, a patriotic Irishman, born in Dublin; bred for the
bar; took part in the Irish rebellion; was hanged for his share in
attempting to seize Dublin Castle (1778-1803).
EMPE`DOCLES, a philosopher of Agrigentum, in Sicily; "extolled in
antiquity as a statesman and orator, as physicist, physician, and poet,
and even as prophet and worker of miracles," who flourished about the
year 440 B.C.; he conceived the universe as made up of "four eternal,
self-subsistent, mutually underivative, but divisible, primal material
bodies, mingled and moulded by two moving forces, the uniting one of
friendship and the disuniting one of strife"; of him it is fabled that,
to persuade his fellow-citizens, with whom he had been in high favour as
their deliverer from the tyranny of the aristocracy, of his bodily
translation from earth to heaven, he threw himself unseen into the crater
of Etna, but that at the next eruption of the mountain his slipper was
cast up and revealed the fraud.
EMPIRES: the ROMAN, capital Rome, dates from the reign of
Augustus, 25 B.C., to that of Theodosius, A.D. 395; OF THE EAST,
or Low Empire, capital Constantinople, being part of the Roman empire,
dates from 295 to 1453; OF THE WEST, capital Rome, dates from 295 to
476; the HOLY, or Second Empire of the West, founded by Charlemagne,
dates from 800 to 911; the LATIN, capital Constantinople, founded by
the Crusaders, dates from 1204 to 1261; the GERMAN, founded by Otho
the Great in 962, ended by abdication of Francis II. of Austria in 1806,
and restored under William I. in 1870; the FRENCH, founded by
Napoleon I., dates from 1804 to 1815, and as established by Napoleon III.
dates from 1852 to 1870; OF THE INDIES, founded in 1876 under the
crown of
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