VOLUME IX SLICE III Electrostatics to Engis (continued 4)

With one more denunciation of the house of Ahab, Elijah’s function as a messenger of wrath was fully discharged (2 Kings i.). When Ahaziah, the son of Ahab, having injured himself by falling through a lattice, sent to inquire of Baal-zebub, the god of Ekron, whether he should recover, the prophet was commanded to appear to the messengers and tell them that, for this resort to a false god, the king should die. The effect of his appearance was such that they turned back without attempting to fulfil their errand. Ahaziah despatched a captain with a band of fifty to arrest him. They came upon Elijah seated on “the mount,”—probably Carmel. The imperious terms in which he was summoned to come down were punished by fire from heaven, which descended at the bidding of Elijah and consumed the whole land. A second captain and fifty were despatched, behaved in a similar way, and met the same fate. The leader of a third troop took a humbler tone, sued for mercy, and obtained it. Elijah then went with them to the king, but only to repeat before his face the doom he had already made known to his messengers, which was almost immediately afterwards fulfilled. The spirit, even the style of this narrative, points unmistakably to its being of late origin. It shocks the moral sense with its sanguinary character more than, perhaps, any other Old Testament story.

The only mention of Elijah’s name in the book of Chronicles (2 Chronicles xxi. 12-15) is where he is represented as sending a letter of rebuke and denunciation to Jehoram, son of Jehoshaphat, king of Judah. The chronological difficulties which are involved suggest that the floating traditions of this great personality were easily attached to well-known names whether strictly contemporary or not. It was before the death of Jehoshaphat that the last grand scene in Elijah’s life occurred (2 Kings ii., see iii. 1). He had taken up his residence with Elisha at one of the prophetic guilds at Gilgal. His approaching end seems to have been known to the guilds at Bethel and Jericho, both of which they visited in their last journey. At the Jordan, Elijah, wrapping his prophet’s mantle together, smote the water with it, and so by a last miracle passed over on dry ground. When they had crossed the master desired the disciple to ask some parting blessing. The request for a double portion (i.e. probably a first-born’s portion, Deut. xxi. 17)10 of the prophet’s spirit Elijah characterized as a hard thing; but he promised to grant it if Elisha should see him when he was taken away. The end is told in words of simple sublimity: “And it came to pass, as they still went on and talked, that, behold, there appeared a chariot of fire, and horses of fire, which parted them both asunder; and Elijah went up by a whirlwind into heaven” (2 Kings ii. 11). It is scarcely necessary to point out, however, that through the figure the narrative evidently means to convey as fact that Elijah passed from earth, not by the gates of death, but by miraculous translation. Such a supernatural close is in perfect harmony with a career into every stage of which the supernatural enters as an essential feature. For whatever explanation may be offered of the miraculous element in Elijah’s life, it must obviously be one that accounts not for a few miraculous incidents only, which might be mere excrescences, but for a series of miraculous events so closely connected and so continuous as to form the main thread of the history.

Elijah occupied an altogether peculiar place in later Jewish history and tradition. For the general belief that he should return for the restoration of Israel cf. Mal. iv. 5-6; Matt. xi. 14, xvi. 14; Luke ix. 8; John i. 21, and on the development of the thought see Bousset, Antichrist, s.v., and the Jewish Encyc. vol. v. p. 126. In Mahommedan tradition Elijah is the everlasting youthful el-Khidr or el-Khadir.

Elijah is canonized both in the Greek and in the Latin Churches, his festival being kept in both on the 20th July—the date of his ascension in the nineteenth year of Jehoshaphat, according to Cornelius a Lapide. The natural and most reliable estimate of the career of Elijah is that which is based upon a critical examination of the narratives; see, in addition to Robertson Smith, Prophets of Israel(²), pp. 75 sqq., Cheyne, Hallowing of Criticism, the articles by Addis in Encyc. Bib., and J. Strachan, Hastings’ Dict. Bib., H. Gunkel, Elias, Yahve u. Baal (Tübingen, 1906), the literature to Kings, Books of, and the histories referred to in Jews. There is difference of opinion as to the historical importance of both Elijah and Elisha; for a useful summary of views, as also for fuller bibliographical information, see W.R. Harper, Amos and Hosea (Internat. Crit. Comm.), pp. xxxiv.-xlix., and article Hebrew Religion.

(W. R. S.; S. A. C.)

1 The text is uncertain. According to the LXX., he was a native of Tishbeh in Gilead; a more natural reading. Klostermann’s conjecture that the original name of his home was Jabesh-Gilead is attractive but unnecessary. His appearance in the narrative, like Melchizedek, “without father, without mother” (Heb. vii. 3), gave rise to various rabbinical traditions, such as that he was Phinehas, the grandson of Aaron, returned to earth, or that he was an angel in human form.

2 Its duration is vaguely stated; from Luke iv. 25, James v. 17, we learn that it lasted three years and a half; but according to Phoenician tradition (Jos. Ant. viii. 13. 2) only one year.

3 The rationalistic view that the word translated “ravens” should be “Arabians” is improbable. Cheyne’s suggestion that the unknown brook Cherith should be placed to the south of Judah agrees with Josephus (Ant. viii. 13. 2, “he departed into the southern parts”) and with 1 Kings xix. 3, 8; “Jordan” may refer to another river, if it be not a gloss; see Cheyne, Ency. Bib., s.v. “Cherith.”

4 The sudden introduction of Elijah in xvii. 1 may be accounted for by the supposition that the commencement of the narrative had been omitted by the editor of xvi. 29 sqq. Hence we are not told the cause of Ahab’s hostility towards Elijah, nor is the allusion to Jezebel’s massacre of the prophets (xviii. 3, 13) explained. It would appear from Obadiah’s words in ver. 9 that he himself was in fear of his life. Later tradition supposed he was the captain of 2 Kings i. 13, or that the widow of 2 Kings iv. 1 had been his wife.

5 The definition of time by the stated oblation (xviii. 29, 36) is very noteworthy (cp. 2 Kings iii. 20).

6 It is obvious that a purely rationalistic interpretation of the great sign whereby Jahweh manifested himself would be out of place. But there is an interesting parallel in the legend of the kindling of the sacred fire and the igniting of the “thick water” in the time of Nehemiah (2 Macc. i. 18-36). Elsewhere, there were sacred fires kindled by the aid of magical invocations (e.g. Hypaepa, Pausanias v. 27. 3).

7 Yahweh is here supposed to have his seat on the ancient mountain. “It was the God of the Exodus to whom he appealed, the ancient King of Israel in the journeyings through the wilderness.” For the cave, cp. Ex. xxxiii. 22.

8 The theophany is clearly no rebuke to an impatient prophet, nor a lesson that the kingdom of heaven was to be built up by the slow and gentle operation of spiritual forces. It expresses the spirituality of Yahweh in a way that indicates a marked advance in the conception of his nature. See Skinner, Century Bible, “Kings,” ad loc.

9 The geographical indications imply that in one account the journey to Damascus and the anointing of Hazael and Jehu must have intervened, and were omitted because another account ascribed these acts to Elisha (2 Kings viii. ix.). In the latter we possess a more historical account of the anointing of Jehu, and Robertson Smith observes: “When the history in 1 Kings represents Elijah as personally commissioned to inaugurate [the revolution] by anointing Jehu and Hazael as well as Elisha, we see that the author’s design is to gather up the whole contest between Yahweh and Baal in an ideal picture of Elijah and his work” (Ency. Brit. (9) art. Kings, vol. xiv. p. 85).

10 Understood in Eccles. xlviii. 12 (Heb.) to mean that Elisha was twice as great as Elijah.

ELIJAH WILNA, or Elijah ben Solomon, best known as the Gaon Elijah of Wilna (1720-1797), a noted Talmudist who hovered between the new and the old schools of thought. Orthodox in practice and feeling, his critical treatment of the rabbinic literature prepared the way for the scientific investigations of the 19th century. As a teacher he was one of the first to discriminate between the various strata in rabbinic records; to him was due the revival of interest in the older Midrash (q.v.) and in the Palestinian Talmud (q.v.), interest in which had been weak for some centuries before his time. He was an ascetic, and was a keen opponent of the emotional mysticism which was known as the new Hassidism.

See S. Schechter’s Studies in Judaism (London, 1896). His voluminous writings are classified in the Jewish Encyclopedia, v. 134.

(I. A.)

ELIOT, CHARLES WILLIAM (1834- ), American educationalist, the son of Samuel Atkins Eliot (1798-1862), mayor of Boston, representative in Congress, and in 1842-1853 treasurer of Harvard, was born in Boston on the 20th of March 1834. He graduated in 1853 at Harvard College, where he was successively tutor (1854-1858) and assistant professor of chemistry (1858-1863). He studied chemistry and foreign educational methods in Europe in 1863-1865, was professor of analytical chemistry in the newly established Massachusetts Institute of Technology (1865-1869), although absent fourteen months in Europe in 1867-1868; and in 1869 was elected president of Harvard University, a choice remarkable at once for his youth and his being a layman and scientist. With Johns Hopkins University, Harvard, in his presidency, led in the work of efficient graduate schools. Its elective system, which has spread far, although not originated by President Eliot, was thoroughly established by him, and is only one of many radical changes which he championed with great success. The raising of entrance requirements, which led to a corresponding raising of the standards of secondary schools, and the introduction of an element of choice in these entrance requirements, which allowed a limited election of studies to secondary pupils, became national tendencies primarily through President Eliot’s potent influence. As chairman of a national Committee of Ten (1890) on secondary school studies, he urged the abandonment of brief disconnected “information” courses, the correlation of subjects taught, the equal rank in college requirements of subjects in which equal time, consecutiveness and concentration were demanded, and a more thorough study of English composition; and to a large degree he secured national sanction for these reforms and their working out by experts into a practicable and applicable system. He laboured to unify the entire educational system, minimize prescription, cast out monotony, and introduce freedom and enthusiasm; and he emphasized the need of special training for special work. He was first to suggest (1894) co-operation by colleges in holding common entrance examinations throughout the country, and it was largely through his efforts that standards were so approximated that this became possible. He contended that secondary schools maintained by public funds should shape their courses for the benefit of students whose education goes no further than such high schools, and not be mere training schools for the universities. His success as administrator and man of affairs and as an educational reformer made him one of the great figures of his time, in whose opinions on any topic the deepest interest was felt throughout the country. In November 1908 he resigned the presidency of Harvard, and retired from the position early in 1909, when he was succeeded by Professor Abbott Lawrence Lowell. In December 1908 he was elected president of the National Civil Service Reform League.

His writings include The Happy Life (1896); Five American Contributions to Civilization, and Other Essays and Addresses (1897); Educational Reform, Essays and Addresses 1869-1897 (1898); More Money for the Public Schools (1903); Four American Leaders (1906), chapters on Franklin, Washington, Channing and Emerson; University Administration (1908); and with F.H. Storer, a Compendious Manual of Qualitative Chemical Analysis (Boston, 1869; many times reissued and revised). His annual reports as President of Harvard were notable contributions to the literature of education in America, and he delivered numerous public addresses, many of which have been reprinted.

See “President Eliot’s Administration,” by different hands, a summary of his work at Harvard in 1869-1894, in The Harvard Graduates’ Magazine, vol. 2, pp. 449-504 (Boston, Mass., 1894); and E. Kuhnemann, Charles W. Eliot, President of Harvard (Boston, 1909).

His son, Charles Eliot (1859-1897), graduated at Harvard in 1882, studied landscape architecture at the Bussey Institution of Harvard and in Europe, successfully urged the incorporation of the Massachusetts Trustees of Public Reservations (1891) and of the Metropolitan Park Commission (1892) of Boston, became landscape architect to the Metropolitan Park Commission in 1892, and in 1893, with F.L. Olmsted and J.C. Olmsted, formed the firm of Olmsted, Olmsted & Eliot, which was employed by the Metropolitan Commission. His life was written by his father, Charles Eliot, Landscape Architect (Boston, 1902).

ELIOT, GEORGE, the pen-name of the famous English writer, née Mary Ann (or Marian) Evans (1819-1880), afterwards Mrs J.W. Cross, born at Arbury Farm, in Warwickshire, on the 22nd of November 1819. Her father, Robert Evans, was the agent of Mr Francis Newdigate, and the first twenty-one years of the great novelist’s life were spent on the Arbury estate. She received an ordinary education at respectable schools till the age of seventeen, when her mother’s death, and the marriage of her elder sister, called her home in the character of housekeeper. This, though it must have sharpened her sense, already too acute, of responsibility, was an immense advantage to her mind, and, later, to her career, for, delivered from the tiresome routine of lessons and class-work, she was able to work without pedantic interruptions at German, Italian and music, and to follow her unusually good taste in reading. The life, inasmuch as she was a girl still in her teens, was no doubt monotonous, even unhappy. Just as Cardinal Newman felt, with such different results, the sadness and chain of evangelical influences from his boyhood till the end of his days, so Marian Evans was subdued all through her youth by a severe religious training which, while it pinched her mind and crushed her spirit, attracted her idealism by the very hardness of its perfect counsels. It is not surprising to find, therefore, that when Mr Evans moved to Coventry in 1841, and so enlarged the circle of their acquaintance, she became much interested in some new friends, Mr and Mrs Charles Bray and Mr Charles Hennell. Mr Bray had literary taste and wrote works on the Education of the Feelings, the Philosophy of Necessity, and the like. Mr Hennell had published in 1838 An Enquiry concerning the Origin of Christianity. Miss Evans, then twenty-two, absorbed immediately these unexpected, and, at that time, daring habits of thought. So compelling was the atmosphere that it led to a complete change in her opinions. Kind in her affection, she was relentless in argument. She refused to go to church (for some time, at least), wrote painful letters to a former governess—the pious Miss Lewis—and barely avoided an irremediable quarrel with her father, a churchman of the old school. Here was rebellion indeed. But rebels come, for the most part, from the provinces where petty tyranny, exercised by small souls, show the scheme of the universe on the meanest possible scale. George Eliot was never orthodox again; she abandoned, with fierce determination, every creed, and although she passed, later, through various phases, she remained incessantly a rationalist in matters of faith and in all other matters. It is nevertheless true that she wrote admirably about religion and religious persons. She had learnt the evangelical point of view; she knew—none better—the strength of religious motives; vulgar doubts of this fact were as distasteful to her as they were to another eminent writer, to whom she refers in one of her letters (dated 1853) as “a Mr Huxley, who was the centre of interest” at some “agreeable evening.” Her books abound in tributes to Christian virtue, and one of her own favourite characters was Dinah Morris in Adam Bede.

She undertook, about the beginning of 1844, the translation of Strauss’s Leben Jesu. This work, published in 1846, was considered scholarly, but it met, in the nature of things, with no popular success. On the death of Mr Evans in 1849, she went abroad for some time, and we hear of no more literary ventures till 1851, when she accepted the assistant-editorship of the Westminster Review. For a while she had lodgings at the offices of that publication in the Strand, London. She wrote several notable papers, and became acquainted with many distinguished authors of that period—among them Herbert Spencer, Carlyle, Harriet Martineau, Francis Newman and George Henry Lewes. Her friendship with the last-named led to a closer relationship which she regarded as a marriage. Among the many criticisms passed upon this step (in view of the fact, among other considerations, that Lewes had a wife living at the time), no one has denied her courage in defying the law, or questioned the quality of her tact in a singularly false position. That she felt the deepest affection for Lewes is evident; that we owe the development of her genius to his influence and constant sympathy is all but certain. Yet it is also sure that what she gained from his intimate companionship was heavily paid for in the unceasing consciousness that most people thought her guilty of a grave mistake, and found her written words, with their endorsement of traditional morality, wholly at variance with the circumstances of her private life. Doubts of her suffering in this respect will be at once dismissed after a study of her journal and letters. Stilted and unnatural as these are to a tragic degree, one can read well enough between the lines, and also in the elaborate dedication of each manuscript to “my husband” (in terms of the strongest love), that self-repression, coupled with audacity, does not make for peace. Her sensitiveness to criticism was extreme; a flippant paragraph or an illiterate review with regard to her work actually affected her for days. The whole history of her union with Lewes is a complete illustration of the force of sheer will—in that case partly her own and not inconsiderably his—over a nature essentially unfitted for a bold stand against attacks. At first she and the man whom she had described “as a sort of miniature Mirabeau in appearance,” went abroad to Weimar and Berlin, but they returned to England the same year and settled, after several moves, in lodgings at East Sheen.

In 1854 she published The Essence of Christianity, a translation from Feuerbach, a philosopher to whom she had been introduced by Charles Bray. During 1855 she translated Spinoza’s Ethics, wrote articles for the Leader, the Westminster Review, and the Saturday Review—then a new thing. It was not until the following year that she attempted the writing of fiction, and produced The Sad Fortunes of the Reverend Amos Barton—the first of the Scenes of Clerical Life. These, published in Blackwood’s Magazine, were issued in two volumes in 1858. The press in general extended a languid welcome to this work, and although the author received much encouragement from private sources, notably from Charles Dickens, the critics were mostly non-committal, and it was not until the publication of Adam Bede in 1859 that enthusiasm was attracted to the quality of the earlier production. Adam Bede, in the judgment of many George Eliot’s masterpiece, met with a success (in her own words) “triumphantly beyond anything she had dreamed of.” In 1860 appeared The Mill on the Floss. After the sensational good fortune of Adam Bede, the criticism applied to the new novel seems to have been disappointing. We find Miss Evans telling her publisher that “she does not wish to see any newspaper articles.” But the book made its way, and prepared an ever-growing army of readers for Silas Marner (1861), Romola (1862-1863), and Felix Holt (1866).

Silas Marner shows a reversion to her early manner—the manner of Scenes of Clerical Life. Romola, which is what is called an historical novel, owes its vitality not to the portraits of Savonarola or of the heroine, or to its vigorous pictures of Florentine life in the 15th century, but to its superb presentment of the treacherous, handsome Tito Melema, who belongs not to any one period but to every generation. Felix Holt, a novel dealing with political questions, is strained by a painfulness too severe for any reader’s pleasure. Where other eminent authors have produced mechanical books, or books which were mere repetitions of their most popular effort, she erred only on the side of the ponderous and the distressing. Felix Holt is both, and it is the only one of her novels which lacks an unforgettable human note. The Spanish Gypsy (1868), a drama in blank verse, received more public response than most compositions of the kind executed by those connected with the drama or with poetry only; and she published in 1874 another volume of verses, The Legend of Jubal and other Poems.

Any depression which the author may have felt with regard to the faults found with some of the last-named books was completely cured by the praise bestowed on Middlemarch (1872). This profound study of certain types of English character was supreme at the time of its writing, and it remains supreme, of its school, in European literature. Thackeray is brilliant; Tolstoi is vivid to a point where life-likeness overwhelms any consideration of art; Balzac created a whole world; George Eliot did not create, but her exposition of the upper and middle class minds of her day is a masterpiece of scientific psychology. Daniel Deronda (1876), a production on the same lines, was less satisfactory. It exhibited the same human insight, the passionate earnestness, the insinuated special pleading for hard cases, the same intellectual strength, but the subject was unwieldy, almost forbidding, and, as a result, the novel, in spite of its distinction, has never been thoroughly liked. The death of Mr Lewes in 1878 was also the death-blow to her artistic vitality. She corrected the proofs of Theophrastus Such (a collection of essays), but she wrote no more. About two years later, however, she married Mr J.W. Cross, a gentleman whose friendship was especially congenial to a temperament so abnormally dependent on affectionate understanding as George Eliot’s. But she never really recovered from her shock at the loss of George Lewes, and died at 4 Cheyne Walk, Chelsea, on the 22nd of December 1880.

No right estimate of her, whether as a woman, an artist or a philosopher, can be formed without a steady recollection of her infinite capacity for mental suffering, and her need of human support. The statement that there is no sex in genius, is on the face of it, absurd. George Sand, certainly the most independent and dazzling of all women authors, neither felt, nor wrote, nor thought as a man. Saint Teresa, another great writer on a totally different plane, was pre-eminently feminine in every word and idea. George Eliot, less reckless, less romantic than the Frenchwoman, less spiritual than the Spanish saint, was more masculine in style than either; but her outlook was not, for a moment, the man’s outlook; her sincerity, with its odd reserves, was not quite the same as a man’s sincerity, nor was her humour that genial, broad, unequivocal humour which is peculiarly virile. Hers approximated, curiously enough, to the satire of Jane Austen, both for its irony and its application to little everyday affairs. Men’s humour, in its classic manifestations, is on the heroic rather than on the average scale: it is for the uncommon situations, not for the daily tea-table.

Her method of attacking a subject shows the influence of Jane Austen, especially in parts of Middlemarch; one can detect also the stronger influence of Mrs Gaskell, of Charlotte Brontë, and of Miss Edgeworth. It was, however, but an influence, and no more than a man writer, anxious to acquire a knowledge of the feminine point of view, might have absorbed from a study of these women novelists. One often hears that she is not artistic; that her characterization is less distinct than Jane Austen’s; that she tells more than should be known of her heroes and heroines. But it should be remembered that Jane Austen dealt with familiar domestic types, whereas George Eliot excelled in the presentation of extraordinary souls. One woman drew members of polite society with correct notions, while the other woman depicted social rebels with ideas and ideals. In every one of George Eliot’s books, the protagonists, tortured by dreams of perfection, are in revolt against the prudent compromises of the worldly. All through her stories, one hears the clash of “the heroic for earth too high,” and the desperate philosophy, disguised it is true, of Omar Khayyam. In her day, Epicureanism had not reached the life of the people, nor passed into the education of the mob. Few dared to confess that the pursuit of pleasure, whether real or imagined, was the aim of mankind. The charm of Jane Austen is the charm of the untroubled and well-to-do materialist, who sees in a rich marriage, a comfortable house, carriages and an assured income the best to strive for; and in a fickle lover of either sex or the loss of money the severest calamities which can befall the human spirit. Jane Austen despised the greater number of her characters: George Eliot suffered with each of hers. Here, perhaps, we find the reason why she is accused of being inartistic. She could not be impersonal.

Again, George Eliot was a little scornful to those of both sexes who had neither special missions nor the consciousness of this deprivation. Men are seldom in favour of missions in any field. She demanded, too strenuously from the very beginning, an aim, more or less altruistic, from every individual; and as she advanced in life this claim became the more imperative, till at last it overpowered her art, and transformed a great delineator of humanity into an eloquent observer with far too many personal prejudices. But she was altogether free from cynicism, bitterness, or the least tendency to pride of intellect. She suffered from bodily weakness the greater part of her life, and, but for an extraordinary mental health—inherited from the fine yeoman stock from which she sprang—it is impossible that she could have retained, at all times, so sane a view of human conduct, or been the least sentimental among women writers of the first rank—the one wholly without morbidity in any disguise. The accumulation of mere book knowledge, as opposed to the friction of a life spent among all sorts and conditions of men, drove George Eliot at last to write as a specialist for specialists: joy was lost in the consuming desire for strict accuracy: her genius became more and more speculative, less and less emotional. The highly trained brain suppressed the impulsive heart,—the heart described with such candour and pathos as Maggie Tulliver’s in The Mill on the Floss. For this reason—chiefly because philosophy is popularly associated with inactive depression, whereas human nature is held to be eternally exhilarating—her later works have not received so much praise as her earlier productions. But one has only to compare Romola or Daniel Deronda with the compositions of any author except herself to realize the greatness of her designs, and the astonishing gifts brought to their final accomplishment.

See also the Life of George Eliot, edited by J.W. Cross (3 vols., 1885-1887); George Eliot, by Sir Leslie Stephen, in the “English Men of Letters” series (1902); by Oscar Browning, “Great Writers” series (1890), with a bibliography by J.P. Anderson; by Mathilde Blind, “Eminent Women” series, a new edition of which also contains a bibliography (Boston, Mass., 1904).

(P. M. T. C.)

ELIOT, SIR JOHN (1592-1632), English statesman, son of Richard Eliot, a member of an old Devonshire family lately settled in Cornwall, was born at his father’s seat at Port Eliot in Cornwall in 1592. He matriculated at Exeter College, Oxford, on the 4th of December 1607, and leaving the university after a residence of three years he studied law at one of the inns of court. He also spent some months travelling in France, Spain and Italy, in company, for part of the time, with young George Villiers, afterwards duke of Buckingham. He was only twenty-two when he began his parliamentary career as member for St Germans in the “addled parliament” of 1614. In 1618 he was knighted, and next year through the patronage of Buckingham he obtained the appointment of vice-admiral of Devon, with large powers for the defence and control of the commerce of the county. It was not long before the characteristic energy with which he performed the duties in his office involved him in difficulties. After many attempts, in 1623 he succeeded by a clever but dangerous manœuvre in entrapping the famous pirate John Nutt, who had for years infested the southern coast, inflicting immense damage upon English commerce. The issue is noteworthy. The pirate, having a powerful protector at court in Sir George Calvert, the secretary of state, was pardoned; while the vice-admiral, upon charges which could not be substantiated, was flung into the Marshalsea, and detained there nearly four months.

A few weeks after his release Eliot was elected member of parliament for Newport (February 1624). On the 27th of February he delivered his first speech, in which he at once revealed his great powers as an orator, demanding boldly that the liberties and privileges of parliament, repudiated by James I. in the former parliament, should be secured. In the first parliament of Charles I., in 1625, he urged the enforcement of the laws against the Roman Catholics. Meanwhile he had continued the friend and supporter of Buckingham and greatly approved of the war with Spain. Buckingham’s incompetence, however, and the bad faith with which both he and the king continued to treat the parliament, alienated Eliot completely from the administration. Distrust of his former friend quickly grew in Eliot’s excitable mind to a certainty of his criminal ambition and treason to his country. Returned to the parliament of 1626 as member for St Germans, he found himself, in the absence of other chiefs of the opposition whom the king had secured by nominating them sheriffs, the leader of the House. He immediately demanded an inquiry into the recent disaster at Cadiz. On the 27th of March he made an open and daring attack upon Buckingham and his evil administration. He was not intimidated by the king’s threatening intervention on the 29th, and persuaded the House to defer the actual grant of the subsidies and to present a remonstrance to the king, declaring its right to examine the conduct of ministers. On the 8th of May he was one of the managers who carried Buckingham’s impeachment to the Lords, and on the 10th he delivered the charges against him, comparing him in the course of his speech to Sejanus. Next day Eliot was sent to the Tower. On the Commons declining to proceed with business as long as Eliot and Sir Dudley Digges (who had been imprisoned with him) were in confinement, they were released, and parliament was dissolved on the 15th of June. Eliot was immediately dismissed from his office of vice-admiral of Devon, and in 1627 he was again imprisoned for refusing to pay a forced loan, but liberated shortly before the assembling of the parliament of 1628, to which he was returned as member for Cornwall. He joined in the resistance now organized to arbitrary taxation, was foremost in the promotion of the Petition of Right, continued his outspoken censure of Buckingham, and after the latter’s assassination in August, led the attack in the session of 1629 on the ritualists and Arminians.

In February the great question of the right of the king to levy tonnage and poundage came up for discussion; and on the king ordering an adjournment of parliament, the speaker, Sir John Finch, was held down in the chair while Eliot’s resolutions against illegal taxation and innovations in religion were read to the House by Holles (q.v.). In consequence, Eliot, with eight other members, was imprisoned on the 4th of March in the Tower. He refused to answer in his examination, relying on his privilege of parliament, and on the 29th of October was removed to the Marshalsea. On the 26th of January he appeared at the bar of the king’s bench, with Holles and Valentine, to answer a charge of conspiracy to resist the king’s order, and refusing to acknowledge the jurisdiction of the court he was fined £2000 and ordered to be imprisoned during the king’s pleasure and till he had made submission. This he steadfastly refused. While some of the prisoners appear to have had certain liberty allowed to them, Eliot’s confinement in the Tower was made exceptionally severe. Charles’s anger had been from the first directed chiefly against him, not only as his own political antagonist but as the prosecutor and bitter enemy of Buckingham; “an outlawed man,” he described him, “desperate in mind and fortune.”

Eliot languished in prison for some time, during which he wrote several works, his Negotium posterorum, an account of the parliament in 1625; The Monarchie of Man, a political treatise; De jure majestatis, a Political Treatise of Government; and An Apology for Socrates, his own defence. In the spring of 1632 he fell into a decline. In October he petitioned Charles for permission to go into the country, but leave could only be obtained at the price of submission, and was finally refused. He died on the 27th of November 1632. When his son requested permission to move the body to Port Eliot, Charles, whose resentment still survived, returned the curt refusal: “Let Sir John Eliot be buried in the church of that parish where he died.” The manner of Eliot’s death, not without suspicion of foul play, and as the result of the king’s implacability and the severe treatment to which he had been subjected, had more effect, probably, than any other single incident in embittering and precipitating the dispute between king and parliament; and the tragic sacrifice of a man so gifted and patriotic, and actuated originally by no antagonistic feeling against the monarchy or the church, is the surest condemnation of the king’s policy and administration. Eliot was essentially a great orator, inspired by enthusiasm and high ideals, which he was able to communicate to his hearers by his eloquence, but, like Chatham afterwards, he had not only the gifts but the failings of the orator, was incapable of well-reasoned and balanced judgment, and, though one of the greatest personalities of the time, was inferior to Pym both as a party leader and as a statesman.

Eliot married Rhadagund, daughter of Richard Gedie of Trebursye in Cornwall, by whom he had five sons, from the youngest of whom Nicholas the present earl of St Germans is descended, and four daughters.

The Life of Sir J. Eliot, by J. Forster (1864), is supplemented and corrected by Gardiner’s History of England, vols. v.-vii., and the article in the Dict. of Nat. Biog., by the same author. Eliot’s writings, together with his Letter-Book, have been edited by Dr Grosart.

ELIOT, JOHN (1604-1690), American colonial clergyman, known as the “Apostle to the Indians,” was born probably at Widford, Hertfordshire, England, where he was baptized on the 5th of August 1604. He was the son of Bennett Eliot, a middle-class farmer. Little is known of his boyhood and early manhood except that he took his degree of B.A. at Jesus College, Cambridge, in 1622. It seems probable that he entered the ministry of the Established Church, but there is nothing definitely known of him until 1629-1630, when he became an usher or assistant at the school of the Rev. Thomas Hooker, at Little Baddow, near Chelmsford. The influence of Hooker apparently determined him to become a Puritan, but his connexion with the school ceased in 1630, when Laud’s persecutions drove Hooker into exile. The realization of the difficulties in the way of a non-conforming clergyman in England undoubtedly determined Eliot to emigrate to America in the autumn of 1631, where he settled first at Boston, assisting for a time at the First Church. In November 1632 he became “teacher” to the church at Roxbury, with which his connexion lasted until his death. There he married Hannah Mulford, who had been betrothed to him in England, and who became his constant helper. In the care of the Roxbury church he was associated with Thomas Welde from 1632 to 1641, with Samuel Danforth (1626-1674) from 1649 to 1674, and with Nehemiah Walter (1663-1750) from 1688 to 1690.

Inspired with the idea of converting the Indians, his first step was to perfect himself in their dialects, which he did by the assistance of a young Indian whom he received into his home. With his aid he translated the Ten Commandments and the Lord’s Prayer. He first successfully preached to the Indians in their own tongue at Nonantum (Newton) in October 1646. At the third meeting several Indians declared themselves converted, and were soon followed by many others. Eliot induced the Massachusetts General Court to set aside land for their residence, the same body also voting him £10 to prosecute the work, and directing that two clergymen be annually elected by the clergy as preachers to the Indians. As soon as the success of Eliot’s endeavours became known, the necessary funds flowed in upon him from private sources in both Old and New England. In July 1649 parliament incorporated the “Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in New England,” which henceforth supported and directed the work inaugurated by Eliot. The first appeal for aid brought contributions of £11,000. In 1651 the Christian Indian town founded by Eliot was removed from Nonantum to Natick, where residences, a meeting-house, and a school-house were erected, and where Eliot preached, when able, once in every two weeks as long as he lived. To this community Eliot applied a plan of government by means of tens, fifties and hundreds, which he subsequently advocated as suitable for all England. Eliot’s missionary labours encouraged others to follow in his footsteps. A second town under his direction was established at Ponkapog (Stoughton) in 1654, in which he had the assistance of Daniel Gookin (c. 1612-1687). His success was duplicated in Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket by the Mayhews, and by 1674 the unofficial census of the “praying Indians” numbered 4000. King Philip’s War (1675-76) was a staggering blow to all missionary enterprise; and although few of the converted Indians proved disloyal, it was some years before adequate support could again be enlisted. Yet at Eliot’s death, which occurred at Roxbury on the 21st of May 1690, the missions were at the height of their prosperity, and that the results of his labours were not permanent was due only to the racial traits of the New England tribes.

Of wider influence and more lasting value than his personal labours as a missionary was Eliot’s work as a translator of the Bible and various religious works into the Massachusetts dialect of the Algonquian language. The first work completed was the Catechism, published in 1653 at Cambridge, Massachusetts, the first book to be printed in the Indian tongue. Several years elapsed before Eliot completed his task of translating the Bible. The New Testament was at last issued in 1661, and the Old Testament followed two years later. The New Testament was bound with it, and thus the whole Bible was completed. To it were added a Catechism and a metrical version of the Psalms. The title of this Bible, now a great rarity, is Mamussee Wunneetupanatamwe Up-Biblum God naneeswe Nukkone Testament kah wonk Wusku Testament-Ne quoshkinnumuk nashpe Wuttinneumoh Christ noh assoowesit John Eliot; literally translated, “The Whole Holy His-Bible God, both Old Testament and also New Testament. This turned by the-servant-of-Christ, who is called John Eliot.”

This book was printed in 1663 at Cambridge, Mass., by Samuel Green and Marmaduke Johnson, and was the first Bible printed in America. In 1685 appeared a second edition, in the preparation of which Eliot was assisted by the Rev. John Cotton (1640-1699), the younger, of Plymouth, who also had a wide knowledge of the Indian tongue.

Besides his Bible, Eliot published at Cambridge in 1664 a translation of Baxter’s Call to the Unconverted, and in 1665 an abridged translation of Bishop Bayly’s Practice of Piety. With the assistance of his sons he completed (1664) his well-known Indian Grammar Begun, printed at Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1666. It was reprinted in vol. ix. of the Collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society. The Indian Primer, comprising an exposition of the Lord’s Prayer and a translation of the Larger Catechism, was published at Cambridge in 1669, and was reprinted under the editorial superintendence of Mr John Small of the university of Edinburgh in 1877. In 1671 Eliot printed in English a little volume entitled Indian Dialogues, followed in 1672 by his Logick Primer, both of which were intended for the instruction of the Indians in English. His last translation was Thomas Shepard’s Sincere Convert, completed and published by Grindal Rawson in 1689. Eliot’s literary activity, however, extended into other fields than that of Indian instruction. He was, with Richard Mather, one of the editors of the Bay Psalm Book (1640). Several tracts written wholly or in part by him in the nature of reports to the society which supported his missions were published at various times in England. In 1660 he published a curious treatise on government entitled The Christian Commonwealth, in which he found the ideal of government in the ancient Jewish state, and proposed the reorganization of the English government on the basis of a numerical subdivision of the inhabitants. His Harmony of the Gospels (1678) was a life of Jesus Christ.

Bibliography.—An account of Eliot’s life and work is contained in Williston Walker’s Ten New England Leaders (New York, 1901). There is a “Life of John Eliot,” by Convers Francis, in Sparks’ American Biography, vol. v. (New York, 1853); another by N. Adams (Boston, 1847); and a sketch in Cotton Mather’s Magnalia (London, 1702). For a good account of his publications in the Indian language see the chapter on “The Indian Tongue and its Literature,” by J.H. Trumbull, in vol. i. of the Memorial History of Boston (1882).

(W. Wr.)

ELIS, or Eleia, an ancient district of southern Greece, bounded on the N. by Achaea, E. by Arcadia, S. by Messenia, and W. by the Ionian Sea. The local form of the name was Valis, or Valeia, and its meaning, in all probability, “the lowland.” In its physical constitution Elis is practically one with Achaea and Arcadia; its mountains are mere offshoots of the Arcadian highlands, and its principal rivers are fed by Arcadian springs. From Erymanthus in the north, Skollis (now known as Mavri and Santameri in different parts of its length) stretches toward the west, and Pholoe along the eastern frontier; in the south a prolongation of Mount Lycaeon bore in ancient times the names of Minthe and Lapithus, which have given place respectively to Alvena and to Kaiapha and Smerna. These mountains are well clothed with vegetation, and present a soft and pleasing appearance in contrast to the picturesque wildness of the parent ranges. They gradually sink towards the west and die off into what was one of the richest alluvial tracts in the Peloponnesus. Except where it is broken by the rocky promontories of Chelonatas (now Chlemutzi) and Ichthys (now Katakolo), the coast lies low, with stretches of sand in the north and lagoons and marshes towards the south. During the summer months communication with the sea being established by means of canals, these lagoons yield a rich harvest of fish to the inhabitants, who at the same time, however, are almost driven from the coast by the swarms of gnats. The district for administrative purposes forms part of the nome of Elis and Achaea (see Greece).

Elis was divided into three districts—Hollow or Lowland Elis (ἡ κοίλη Ἦλις), Pisatis, or the territory of Pisa, and Triphylia, or the country of the three tribes. (1) Hollow Elis, the largest and most northern of the three, was watered by the Peneus and its tributary the Ladon, whose united stream forms the modern Gastouni. It included not only the champaign country originally designated by its name, but also the mountainous region of Acrorea, occupied by the offshoots of Erymanthus. Besides the capital city of Elis, it contained Cyllene, an Arcadian settlement on the sea-coast, whose inhabitants worshipped Hermes under the phallic symbol; Pylus, at the junction of the Peneus and the Ladon, which, like so many other places of the same name, claimed to be the city of Nestor, and the fortified frontier town of Lasion, the ruins of which are still visible at Kuti, near the village of Kumani. The district was famous in antiquity for its cattle and horses; and its byssus, supposed to have been introduced by the Phoenicians, was inferior only to that of Palestine. (2) Pisatis extended south from Hollow Elis to the right bank of the Alpheus, and was divided into eight departments called after as many towns. Of these Salmone, Heraclea, Cicysion, Dyspontium and Harpina are known—the last being the reputed burial-place of Marmax, the suitor of Hippodamia. From the time of the early investigators it has been disputed whether Pisa, which gave its name to the district, has ever been a city, or was only a fountain or a hill. By far the most important spot in Pisatis was the scene of the great Olympic games, on the northern bank of the Alpheus (see Olympia). (3) Triphylia stretches south from the Alpheus to the Neda, which forms the boundary towards Messenia. Of the nine towns mentioned by Polybius, only two attained to any considerable influence—Lepreum and Macistus, which gave the names of Lepreatis and Macistia to the southern and northern halves of Triphylia. The former was the seat of a strongly independent population, and continued to take every opportunity of resisting the supremacy of the Eleans. In the time of Pausanias it was in a very decadent condition, and possessed only a poor brick-built temple of Demeter; but considerable remains of its outer walls are still in existence near the village of Strovitzi, on a part of the Minthe range.

The original inhabitants of Elis were called Caucones and Paroreatae. They are mentioned for the first time in Greek history under the title of Epeians, as setting out for the Trojan War, and they are described by Homer as living in a state of constant hostility with their neighbours the Pylians. At the close of the 11th century B.C. the Dorians invaded the Peloponnesus, and Elis fell to the share of Oxylus and the Aetolians. These people, amalgamating with the Epeians, formed a powerful kingdom in the north of Elis. After this many changes took place in the political distribution of the country, till at length it came to acknowledge only three tribes, each independent of the others. These tribes were the Epeians, Minyae and Eleans. Before the end of the 8th century B.C., however, the Eleans had vanquished both their rivals, and established their supremacy over the whole country. Among the other advantages which they thus gained was the right of celebrating the Olympic games, which had formerly been the prerogative of the Pisatans. The attempts which this people made to recover their lost privilege, during a period of nearly two hundred years, ended at length in the total destruction of their city by the Eleans. From the time of this event (572 B.C.) till the Peloponnesian War, the peace of Elis remained undisturbed. In that great contest Elis sided at first with Sparta; but that power, jealous of the increasing prosperity of its ally, availed itself of the first pretext to pick a quarrel. At the battle of Mantinea (418 B.C.) the Eleans fought against the Spartans, who, as soon as the war came to a close, took vengeance upon them by depriving them of Triphylia and the towns of the Acrorea. The Eleans made no attempt to re-establish their authority over these places, till the star of Thebes rose in the ascendant after the battle of Leuctra (371 B.C.). It is not unlikely that they would have effected their purpose had not the Arcadian confederacy come to the assistance of the Triphylians. In 366 B.C. hostilities broke out between them, and though the Eleans were at first successful, they were soon overpowered, and their capital very nearly fell into the hands of the enemy. Unable to make head against their opponents, they applied for assistance to the Spartans, who invaded Arcadia, and forced the Arcadians to recall their troops from Elis. The general result of this war was the restoration of their territory to the Eleans, who were also again invested with the right of holding the Olympic games. During the Macedonian supremacy in Greece they sided with the victors, but refused to fight against their countrymen. After the death of Alexander they renounced the Macedonian alliance. At a subsequent period they joined the Aetolian League, but persistently refused to identify themselves with the Achaeans. When the whole of Greece fell under the Roman yoke, the sanctity of Olympia secured for the Eleans a certain amount of indulgence. The games still continued to attract to the country large numbers of strangers, until they were finally put down by Theodosius in 394, two years previous to the utter destruction of the country by the Gothic invasion under Alaric. In later times Elis fell successively into the hands of the Franks and the Venetians, under whose rule it recovered to some extent its ancient prosperity. By the latter people the province of Belvedere on the Peneus was called, in consequence of its fertility, “the milch cow of the Morea.”

ELIS, the chief city of the ancient Greek district of Elis, was situated on the river Peneus, just where it passes from the mountainous district of Acrorea into the champaign below. According to native tradition, it was originally founded by Oxylus, the leader of the Aetolians, whose statue stood in the market-place. In 471 B.C. it received a great extension by the incorporation (synoecism) of various small hamlets, whose inhabitants took up their abode in the city. Up to this date it only occupied the ridge of the hill now called Kalaskopi, to the south of the Peneus, but afterwards it spread out in several suburbs, and even to the other side of the stream. As all the athletes who intended to take part in the Olympic games were obliged to undergo a month’s training in the city, its gymnasiums were among its principal institutions. They were three in number—the “Xystos,” with its avenues of plane-trees, its plethrion or wrestling-place, its altars to Heracles, to Eros and Anteros, to Demeter and Kore (Cora), and its cenotaph of Achilles; the “Tetragonon,” appropriated to boxing exercises; and the “Maltho,” in the interior of which was a hall or council chamber called Lalichmion after its founder. The market-place was of the old-fashioned type, with porticoes at intervals and paths leading between them. It was called the Hippodrome because it was commonly used for exercising horses. Among the other objects of interest were the temple of Artemis Philomirax; the Hellanodicaeon, or office of the Hellanodicae; the Corcyrean Hall, a building in the Dorian style with two façades, built of spoils from Corcyra; a temple of Apollo Acesius; a temple of Silenus; an ancient structure supported on oaken pillars and reputed to be the burial-place of Oxylus; the building where the sixteen women of Elis were wont to weave a robe for the statue of Hera at Olympia; the temple of Aphrodite, with a statue of the goddess by Pheidias as Urania with a tortoise beneath her foot, and by Scopas as Pandemos, riding on a goat; and the shrine of Dionysus, whose festival, the Thyia, was yearly celebrated in the neighbourhood. On the acropolis was a temple of Athena, with a gold and ivory statue by Pheidias. The history of the town is closely identified with that of the country. In 399 B.C. it was occupied by Agis, king of Sparta. The acropolis was fortified in 312 by Telesphorus, the admiral of Antigonus, but it was shortly afterwards dismantled by Philemon, another of his generals. A view of the site is given by Stanhope. It is now called Palaeopolis. No traces of any buildings can be identified, the only remains visible dating from Roman times.

See Pausanias vi. 23-26; J. Spencer Stanhope, Olympia and Elis (1824), folio; W.M. Leake, Morea (1830); E. Curtius, Peloponnesus (1851-1852); Schiller, Stämme und Staaten Griechenlands; C. Bursian, Geographie von Griechenland (1868-1872); P. Gardner, “The Coins of Elis,” in Num. Chr. (1879).

(E. Gr.)

ELIS, PHILOSOPHICAL SCHOOL OF. This school was founded by Phaedo, a pupil of Socrates. It existed for a very short time and was then transferred by Menedemus to Eretria, where it became known as the Eretrian school. Its chief members, beside Phaedo, were Anchipylus, Moschus and Pleistanus (see Phaedo and Menedemus).

ELISAVETGRAD, a fortress and town of Russia, in the government of Kherson, 296 m. by rail N.E. of Odessa on the Balta-Kremenchug railway, and on the Ingul river, in 48° 31’ N. and 32° 10′ E. The population increased from 23,725 in 1860 to 66,182 in 1900. The town is regularly built, with wide streets, some of them lined with trees, and is a wealthy town, which has become an industrial centre for the region especially on account of its steam flour-mills, in which it is second only to Odessa, its distilleries, mechanical workshops, tobacco and tallow factories and brickworks. It is an important centre for trade in cereals and flour for export, and in sheep, cattle, wool, leather and timber. Five fairs are held annually. It has a military school, a first-class meteorological station and a botanical garden. The town was founded in 1754 and named after the empress Elizabeth. The fortifications are now decayed.

ELISAVETPOL, a government of Russia, Transcaucasia, having the governments of Tiflis and Daghestan on the N., Baku on the E., and Erivan and Tiflis on the W. and Persia on the S. Area, 16,721 sq. m. It includes: (a) the southern slope of the main Caucasus range in the north-east, where Bazardyuzi (14,770 ft.) and other peaks rise above the snow-line; (b) the arid and unproductive steppes beside the Kura, reaching 1000 ft. of altitude in the west and sinking to 100-200 ft. in the east, where irrigation is necessary; and (c) the northern slopes of the Transcaucasian escarpment and portions of the Armenian plateau, which is intersected towards its western boundary, near Lake Gok-cha, by chains of mountains consisting of trachytes and various crystalline rocks, and reaching 12,845 ft. in Mount Kapujikh. Elsewhere the country has the character of a plateau, 7000 to 8000 ft. high, deeply trenched by tributaries of the Aras. All varieties of climate are found from that of the snowclad peaks, Alpine meadows, and stony deserts of the high levels, to that of the hill slopes, clothed with gardens and vineyards, and of the arid Caspian steppes. Thus, at Shusha, on the plateau, at an altitude of 3680 ft., the average temperatures are: year 48°, January 26°, July 66°; annual rainfall, 26.4; while at Elisavetpol, in the valley of the Kura, they are: year 55°, January 32°.2, July 77° and rainfall only 10.3 in. Nearly one-fifth of the surface is under forests.

The population which was 885,379 in 1897 (only 392,124 women; 84,130 urban), and was estimated at 953,300 in 1906, consists chiefly of Tatars (56%) and Armenians (33%). The remainder are Kurds (4.7%), Russians and a few Germans, Jews, Kurins, Udins and Tates. Peasants form the great bulk of the population. Some of the Tatars and the Kurds are nomadic. Wheat, maize, barley, oats and rye are grown, also rice. Cultivation of cotton has begun, but the rearing of silkworms is of old standing, especially at Nukha (1650 tons of cocoons on the average are obtained every year). Nearly 8000 acres are under vines, the yield of wine averaging 82½ million gallons annually. Gardening reaches a high standard of perfection. Liquorice root is obtained to the extent of about 35,000 tons annually. The rearing of live-stock is largely carried on on the steppes. Copper, magnetic iron ore, cobalt and a small quantity of naphtha are extracted, and nearly 10,000 persons are employed in manufacturing industry—copper works and silk-mills. Carpet-weaving is widely spread. Owing to the Transcaucasian railway, which crosses the government, trade, both in the interior and with Persia, is very brisk. The government is divided into eight districts, Elisavetpol, Aresh, Jebrail, Jevanshir, Kazakh, Nukha, Shusha and Zangezur. The only towns, besides the capital, are Nukha (24,811 inhabitants in 1897) and Shusha (25,656).

ELISAVETPOL (formerly Ganja, alternative names being Kenjeh and Kanga), a town of Russia, capital of the government of the same name, 118 m. by rail S.E. of Tiflis and 3½ m. from the railway, at an altitude of 1446 ft. Pop. (1873) 15,439; (1897) 33,090. It is a very old town, which changed hands between Persians, Khazars and Arabs even in the 7th century, and later fell into the possession of Mongols, Georgians, Persians and Turks successively, until the Russians took it in 1804, when the change of name was made. It is a badly built place, with narrow streets and low-roofed, windowless houses, and is situated in a very unhealthy locality, but has been much improved, a new European quarter having been built on the site of the old fortress (erected by the Turks in 1712-1724). The inhabitants are chiefly Tatars and Armenians, famed for their excellent gardening, and also for silkworm breeding. It has a beautiful mosque, built by Shah Abbas of Persia in 1620; and a renowned “Green Mosque” amidst the ruins of old Ganja, 4 m. distant. The Persian poet, Shah Nizam (Nizam-ed-Din), was born here in 1141, and is said to have been buried (1203) close to the town. The Persians were defeated by the Russians under Paskevich outside this town in 1826.

ELISHA (a Hebrew name meaning “God is deliverance”), in the Bible, the disciple and successor of Elijah, was the son of Shaphat of Abel-meholah in the valley of the Jordan. He was symbolically elected to the prophetic office by Elijah some time during the reign of Ahab (1 Kings xix. 19-21), and he survived until the reign of Joash. His career thus appears to have extended over a period of nearly sixty years. The relation between Elijah and Elisha was of a particularly close kind, but the difference between them is much more striking than the resemblance. Elijah is the prophet of the wilderness, wandering, rugged and austere; Elisha is the prophet of civilized life, of the city and the court, with the dress, manners and appearance of ordinary “grave citizens.” Elijah is the messenger of vengeance—sudden, fierce and overwhelming; Elisha is the messenger of mercy and restoration. Elijah’s miracles, with few exceptions, are works of wrath and destruction; Elisha’s miracles, with but one notable exception, are works of beneficence and healing. Elijah is the “prophet as fire” (Ecclus, xlviii. 1), an abnormal agent working for exceptional ends; Elisha is the “holy man of God which passeth by us continually” (2 Kings iv. 9), mixing in the common life of the people.

It is impossible to draw up a detailed chronology of his life. In most of the events narrated no further indication of time is given than by the words “the king of Israel,” the name not being specified. There are some instances in which the order of time is obviously the reverse of the order of narrative, and there are other grounds for concluding that the narrative as we now have it is confused and incomplete. This may serve not only to explain the chronological difficulties, but also to throw some light on the altogether exceptional character of the miraculous element in Elisha’s history. On the literary questions, see further Kings.

Not only are Elisha’s miracles very numerous, even more so than those of Elijah, but they stand in a peculiar relation to the man and his work. With all the other prophets the primary function is spiritual teaching; miracles, even though numerous and many of them symbolical like Elisha’s, are only accessory. With Elisha, on the other hand, miracles seem the principal function, and the teaching is altogether subsidiary. An explanation of the superabundance of miracles in Elisha’s life is suggested by the fact that several of them were merely repetitions or doubles of those of his predecessor. Such were: his first miracle, when, returning across the Jordan, he made a dry path for himself in the same manner as Elijah (2 Kings ii. 14); the increase of the widow’s pot of oil (iv. 1-7); and the restoration of the son of the woman of Shunem to life (iv. 18-37). The theory that stories from the earlier life have been imported by mistake into the later, even if tenable, applies only to three of the miracles, and leaves unexplained a much larger number which are not only not repetitions of those of Elijah, but have an entirely opposite character. The healing of the water of Jericho by putting salt in it (ii. 19-22), the provision of water for the army of Jehoshaphat in the arid desert (iii. 6-20), the neutralizing by meal of the poison in the pottage of the famine-stricken sons of the prophets at Jericho (iv. 38-41), the healing of Naaman the Syrian (v. 1-19), and the recovery of the iron axehead that had sunk in the water (vi. 1-7), are all instances of the beneficence which was the general characteristic of Elisha’s wonder-working activity in contrast to that of Elijah. Another miracle of the same class, the feeding of a hundred men with twenty loaves so that something was left over (iv. 42-44), deserves mention as the most striking though not the only instance of a resemblance between the work of Elisha and that of Jesus (Matt. xiv. 13-21). The one distinct exception to the general beneficence of Elisha’s activity—the destruction of the forty-two children who mocked him as he was going up to Bethel (2 Kings ii. 23-25)—presents an ethical difficulty which is scarcely removed by the suggestion that the narrative has lost some particulars which would have shown the real enormity of the children’s offence. We may prefer to imagine that among the homely stories told of him was one which had for its main object the inculcation of respect for one’s elders.1 The leprosy brought upon Gehazi (v. 20-27), though a miracle of judgment, scarcely belongs to the same class as the other; and it will be observed that Gehazi’s subsequent relations with the court (viii. 1-6) ignore the disease, a fatal hindrance to intercourse. Further, the healing of Naaman (alluded to in Luke iv. 27) presupposes peaceful relations between Israel and the Syrians, with which, however, contrast ch. vi. The wonder-working power of Elisha is represented as continuing even after his death. As the feeding of the hundred men and the cure of leprosy connect his work with that of Jesus, so the story that a dead man who was cast into his sepulchre was brought to life by the mere contact with his bones (2 Kings xiii. 21, cf. Ecclus. xlviii. 12-14) is the most striking instance of an analogy between his miracles and those recorded of medieval saints. Stanley (Jewish Church, 4th ed., ii. 276) in reference to this has remarked that in the life of Elisha alone “in the sacred history the gulf between biblical and ecclesiastical miracles almost disappears.”

The place which Elisha filled in contemporary history was one of great influence and importance, and several narratives testify to his great reputation in Israel. On one occasion, when he delivered the army that had been brought out against Moab from a threatened dearth of water (2 Kings iii.),2 he plainly intimates that, but for his regard to Jehoshaphat, the king of Judah, who was in alliance with Israel, he would not have interfered. Whether he was with the army or was supposed to be living in the desert is left obscure. An interesting touch is the influence of music upon the prophetic mind (v. 15). His next signal interference was during the incursions of the Syrians, when he disclosed the plans of the invaders to the “king of Israel” with such effect that they were again and again baffled. When the “king of Syria” was informed that “Elisha, the prophet that is in Israel, telleth the king of Israel the words that thou speakest in thy bed-chamber,” he at once sent an army to take him captive in Dothan. At Elisha’s prayer his terrified servant beheld an army of horses and chariots of fire surrounding the prophet. At a second prayer the invaders were struck blind, and in this state they were led by Elisha to Samaria, where their sight was restored. Their lives were spared at the command of the prophet, and they returned home so impressed that their incursions thenceforward ceased (vi. 8-23). This is immediately followed by the siege of Samaria by Benhadad which caused a famine of the severest kind. The calamity was imputed by the “king of Israel” to the influence of Elisha, and he ordered the prophet to be immediately put to death. Forewarned of the danger, Elisha ordered the messenger who had been sent to slay him to be detained at the door, and, when, immediately afterwards, the king himself came (“messenger” in vi. 33 should rather be king), predicted a great plenty within twenty-four hours. This was fulfilled by the flight of the Syrian army under the circumstances stated in ch. vii. After the episode with regard to the woman of Shunem (viii. 1-6), which is out of its chronological order, Elisha is represented as at Damascus (viii. 7-15). The reverence with which the foreign monarch Benhadad addressed Elisha deserves to be noted as showing the extent of the prophet’s influence. In sending to know the issue of his illness, the king caused himself to be styled “thy son Benhadad.” Equally remarkable is the very ambiguous nature of Elisha’s reply (viii. 10).3 The most important interference of Elisha in the history of his country constituted the fulfilment of the third of the commands laid upon Elijah. The work of anointing Jehu to be king over Israel was performed by deputy (ix. 1-3). During the forty-five years which the chronological scheme allows for the reigns of Jehu and Jehoahaz the narratives contain no notice of Elisha, but from the circumstances of his death (xiii. 14-21) it is clear that he had continued to enjoy the esteem of the dynasty which he had helped to found. Joash, the grandson of Jehu, waited on him on his death-bed, and addressed him in the words which he himself had used to Elijah: “My father, my father, the chariot of Israel and the horsemen thereof” (cf. ii. 12). By the result of a symbolic discharge of arrows he informed the king of his coming success against Syria, and immediately thereafter he died. The explicit statement that he was buried completes the contrast between him and his greater predecessor.

On the narratives, see Kings. In general those where “the prophet appears as on friendly terms with the king, and possessed of influence at court (e.g. 2 Kings iv. 13, vi. 9, vi. 21, compared with xiii. 14), plainly belong to the time of Jehu’s dynasty, though they are related before the fall of the house of Omri. We can distinguish portions of an historical narrative which speaks of Elisha in connexion with events of public interest, without making him the central figure, and a series of anecdotes of properly biographical character.... In the latter we may distinguish one circle connected with Gilgal, Jericho and the Jordan valley to which Abel-Meholah belongs (iv. 1-7? 38-44, v.? vi. 1-7). Here Elisha appears as the head of the prophetic gilds, having his fixed residence at Gilgal.4 Another circle, which presupposes the accession of the house of Jehu, places him at Dothan or Carmel, and represents him as a personage of almost superhuman dignity. Here there is an obvious parallelism with the history of Elijah, especially with his ascension (cf. 2 Kings vi. 17 with ii. 11; xiii. 14 with ii. 12); and it is to this group of narratives that the ascension of Elijah forms the introduction” (Robertson Smith, Ency. Brit., 9th ed., art. Kings, vol. xiv. p. 186). This twofold representation finds a parallel in the narratives of Samuel, whose history and the conditions reflected therein are analogous to the life and times of Elisha.

Elisha is canonized in the Orthodox Eastern Church, his festival being on the 14th of June, under which date his life is entered in the Acta sanctorum.

See especially, W.R. Smith, Prophets of Israel (Index, s.v.), and the literature to Elijah; Kings, Books of; Prophet.

(W. R. S.; S. A. C.)

1 Similarly Elijah enforces respect for the prophetic office in i. 9 sqq. Prof. Kennett points out to the present writer that the epithet “bald-head” may refer to the sign of mourning for Elisha’s lost master (cf. Ez. vii. 18, Deut. xiv. 1); “Go up” is perhaps to be taken literally (in reference to Elijah’s translation).

2 The method of obtaining water (v. 16 sq.) is that which still gives its name to the Wādi el-Aḥsā (“valley of water pits”) at the southern end of the Dead Sea (Old Test. Jew. Church, 2nd ed., 147). On the other hand, see Burney, Heb. Text of Kings, p. 270.

3 R. V. marg. is an alteration to remove from Elisha the suggestion of an untruth.

4 The Gilgal of Elisha is near the Jordan—comp. vi. 1 with iv. 38, שבים לפניו,—and cannot be other than the great sanctuary 2 m. from Jericho, the local holiness of which is still attested in the Onomastica. It is true that in 2 Kings ii. 1 Bethel seems to lie between Gilgal and Jericho; but v. 25 shows that Gilgal was not originally represented as Elisha’s residence in this narrative, which belongs to the Carmel-Dothan series. On the other hand, for the identification with the Gilgal (Jiljilia) S.W. of Shiloh, see G.A. Smith, Ency. Bib. (s.v. Gilgal); Burney, op. cit., p. 264; Skinner, Century Bible: Kings, p. 278.

ELISHA BEN ABUYAH (c. A.D. 100), a unique figure among the Palestinian Jews of the first Christian century. He was born before the destruction of the Temple (which occurred in A.D. 70) and survived into the 2nd century. It is not easy to decide as to his exact attitude towards Judaism. That he refused to accept the current rabbinical views is certain, though the Talmud cites his legal decisions. Most authorities believe that he was a Gnostic; but while it is certain that he was not a Christian, it is possible that he was simply a Sadducee, and thus an opponent not of Judaism but of Pharisaism. His disciple, the famous Pharisee Meir, remained his steadfast friend, and his efforts to reclaim his former master are among the most pathetic incidents in the Talmud. In later ages Elisha (aḥer “the other,” as he was named) was regarded as the type of a heretic whose pride of intellect betrayed him into infidelity to law and morals. Without much appropriateness Elisha has been sometimes described as the “Faust of the Talmud.”

(I. A.)

ELIXIR (from the Arabic al-iksir, probably an adaptation of the Gr. ξήριον, a powder used for drying wounds, from ξηρός, dry), in alchemy, the medium which would effect the transmutation of base metals into gold; it probably included all such substances—vapours, liquids, &c.—and had a wider meaning than “philosopher’s stone.” The same term, more fully elixir vitae, elixir of life, was given to the substance which would indefinitely prolong life; it was considered to be closely related to, or even identical with, the substance for transmuting metals. In pharmacy the word was formerly given to a strong extract or tincture, but it is only used now for an aromatic sweet preparation, containing one or more drugs, and in such expressions as “elixir of vitriol,” a mixture of sulphuric acid, cinnamon, ginger and alcohol.

ELIZABETH (1533-1603), queen of England and Ireland, born on Sunday the 7th of September 1533, and, like all the Tudors except Henry VII., at Greenwich Palace, was the only surviving child of Henry VIII. by his second queen, Anne Boleyn. With such a mother and with Cranmer as her godfather she represented from her birth the principle of revolt from Rome, but the opponents of that movement attached little importance to her advent into the world. Charles V.’s ambassador, Chapuys, hardly deigned to mention the fact that the king’s amie had given birth to a daughter, and both her parents were bitterly disappointed with her sex. She was, however, given precedence over Mary, her elder sister by sixteen years, and Mary never forgave the infant’s offence. Even this dubious advantage only lasted three years until her mother was beheaded, and by a much more serious freak on Henry’s part “divorced.” Elizabeth has been censured for having made no effort in later years to clear her mother’s memory; but no vindication of Anne’s character could have rehabilitated Elizabeth’s legitimacy. Her mother was not “divorced” for her alleged adultery, because that crime was no ground for divorce by Roman or English canon law. The marriage was declared invalid ab initio either on the ground of Anne’s precontract with Lord Percy or more probably on the ground of the affinity established between Henry and Anne by Henry’s previous relations with Mary Boleyn.

Elizabeth thus lost all hereditary title to the throne, and her early years of childhood can hardly have been happier than Mary’s. Nor was her legitimacy ever legally established; but after Jane Seymour’s death, when Henry seemed likely to have no further issue, she was by act of parliament placed next in order of the succession after Edward and Mary and their issue; and this statutory arrangement was confirmed by the will which Henry VIII. was empowered by statute to make. Queen Catherine Parr introduced some humanity into Henry’s household, and Edward and Elizabeth were well and happily educated together, principally at old Hatfield House, which is now the marquess of Salisbury’s stables. They were there when Henry’s death called Edward VI. away to greater dignities, and Elizabeth was left in the care of Catherine Parr, who married in indecent haste Thomas, Lord Seymour, brother of the protector Somerset. This unprincipled adventurer, even before Catherine’s death in September 1548, paid indelicate attentions to Elizabeth. Any attempt to marry her without the council’s leave would have been treason on his part and would have deprived Elizabeth of her contingent right to the succession. Accordingly, when Seymour’s other misbehaviour led to his arrest, his relations with Elizabeth were made the subject of a very trying investigation, which gave Elizabeth her first lessons in the feminine arts of self-defence. She proved equal to the occasion, partly because she was in all probability innocent of anything worse than a qualified acquiescence in Seymour’s improprieties and a girlish admiration for his handsome face. He or his tragic fate may have touched a deeper chord, but it was carefully concealed; and although in later years Elizabeth seems to have cherished his memory, and certainly showed no love for his brother’s children, at the time she only showed resentment at the indignities inflicted on herself.

For the rest of Edward’s reign Elizabeth’s life was less tempestuous. She hardly rivalled Lady Jane Grey as the ideal Puritan maiden, but she swam with the stream, and was regarded as a foil to her stubborn Catholic sister. She thus avoided the enmity and the still more dangerous favour of Northumberland; and some unknown history lies behind the duke’s preference of the Lady Jane to Elizabeth as his son’s wife and his own puppet for the throne. She thus escaped shipwreck in his crazy vessel, and rode by Mary’s side in triumph into London on the failure of the plot. For a time she was safe enough; she would not renounce her Protestantism until Catholicism had been made the law of the land, but she followed Gardiner’s advice to her father when he said it was better that he should make the law his will than try to make his will the law. As a presumptive ruler of England she was, like Cecil, and for that matter the future archbishop Parker also, too shrewd to commit herself to passive or active resistance to the law; and they merely anticipated Hobbes in holding that the individual committed no sin in subordinating his conscience to the will of the state, for the responsibility for the law was not his but the state’s. Their position was well enough understood in those days; it was known that they were heretics at heart, and that when their turn came they would once more overthrow Catholicism and expect a similar submission from the Catholics.

It was not so much Elizabeth’s religion as her nearness to the throne and the circumstances of her birth that endangered her life in Mary’s reign. While Mary was popular Elizabeth was safe; but as soon as the Spanish marriage project had turned away English hearts Elizabeth inevitably became the centre of plots and the hope of the plotters. Had not Lady Jane still been alive to take off the edge of Mary’s indignation and suspicion Elizabeth might have paid forfeit for Wyat’s rebellion with her life instead of imprisonment. She may have had interviews with French agents who helped to foment the insurrection; but she was strong and wary enough to avoid Henry II.’s, as she had avoided Northumberland’s, toils; for even in case of success she would have been the French king’s puppet, placed on the throne, if at all, merely to keep it warm for Henry’s prospective daughter-in-law, Mary Stuart. This did not make Mary Tudor any more friendly, and, although the story that Elizabeth favoured Courtenay and that Mary was jealous is a ridiculous fiction, the Spaniards cried loud and long for Elizabeth’s execution. She was sent to the Tower in March 1554, but few Englishmen were fanatic enough to want a Tudor beheaded. The great nobles, the Howards, and Gardiner would not hear of such a proposal; and all the efforts of the court throughout Mary’s reign failed to induce parliament to listen to the suggestion that Elizabeth should be deprived of her legal right to the succession. After two months in the Tower she was transferred to Sir Henry Bedingfield’s charge at Woodstock, and at Christmas, when the realm had been reconciled to Rome and Mary was expecting issue, Elizabeth was once more received at court. In the autumn of 1555 she went down to Hatfield, where she spent most of the rest of Mary’s reign, enjoying the lessons of Ascham and Baldassare Castiglione, and planting trees which still survive.

She had only to bide her time while Mary made straight her successor’s path by uprooting whatever affection the English people had for the Catholic faith, Roman jurisdiction and Spanish control. The Protestant martyrs and Calais between them removed all the alternatives to an insular national English policy in church and in state; and no sovereign was better qualified to lead such a cause than the queen who ascended the throne amid universal, and the Spaniards thought indecent, rejoicings at Mary’s death on the 17th of November 1558. “Mere English” she boasted of being, and after Englishmen’s recent experience there was no surer title to popular favour. No sovereign since Harold had been so purely English in blood; her nearest foreign ancestor was Catherine of France, the widow of Henry V., and no English king or queen was more superbly insular in character or in policy. She was the unmistakable child of the age so far as Englishmen shared in its characteristics, for with her English aims she combined some Italian methods and ideas. “An Englishman Italianate,” ran the current jingle, “is a devil incarnate,” and Elizabeth was well versed in Italian scholarship and statecraft. Italians, especially Bernardino Ochino, had given her religious instruction, and the Italians who rejected Catholicism usually adopted far more advanced forms of heresy than Lutheranism, Zwinglianism, or even Calvinism. Elizabeth herself patronized Giacomo Acontio, who thought dogma a “stratagema Satanae,” and her last favourite, Essex was accused of being the ringleader of “a damnable crew of atheists.” A Spanish ambassador early in the reign thought that Elizabeth’s own religion was equally negative, though she told him she agreed with nearly everything in the Augsburg Confession. She was probably not at liberty to say what she really thought, but she made up by saying a great many things which she did not mean. It is clear enough that, although, like her father, she was fond of ritual, she was absolutely devoid of the religious temperament, and that her ecclesiastical preferences were dictated by political considerations. She was sincere enough in her dislike of Roman jurisdiction and of Calvinism; a daughter of Anne Boleyn could have little affection for a system which made her a bastard, and all monarchs agreed at heart with James I.’s aphorism about “no bishop, no king.” It was convenient, too, to profess Lutheran sympathies, for Lutheranism was now an established, monarchical and comparatively respectable religion, very different from the Calvinism against which monarchs directed the Counter-reformation from political motives. Lutheran dogma, however, had few adherents in England, though its political theory coincided with that of Anglicanism in the 16th century. The compromise that resulted from these conflicting forces suited Elizabeth very well; she had little dislike of Catholics who repudiated the papacy, but she was forced to rely mainly on Protestants, and had little respect for any form of ecclesiastical self-government. She valued uniformity in religion, not as a safeguard against heresy, but as a guarantee of the unity of the state. She respected the bishops only as supporters of her throne; and, although the well-known letter beginning “Proud Prelate” is an 18th-century forgery, it is hardly a travesty of Elizabeth’s attitude.

The outlines of her foreign policy are sketched elsewhere (see English History), and her courtships were diplomatic. Contemporary gossip, which was probably justified, said that she was debarred from matrimony by a physical defect; and her cry when she heard that Mary queen of Scots had given birth to a son is the most womanly thing recorded of Elizabeth. Her features were as handsome as Mary’s, but she had little fascination, and in spite of her many suitors no man lost his head over Elizabeth as men did over Mary. She was far too masculine in mind and temperament, and her extravagant addiction to the outward trappings of femininity was probably due to the absence or atrophy of deeper feminine instincts. In the same way the impossibility of marriage made her all the freer with her flirtations, and she carried some of them to lengths that scandalized a public unconscious of Elizabeth’s security. She had every reason to keep them in the dark, and to convince other courts that she could and would marry if the provocation were sufficient. She could not marry Philip II., but she held out hopes to more than one of his Austrian cousins whenever France or Mary Stuart seemed to threaten; and later she encouraged two French princes when Philip had lost patience with Elizabeth and made Mary Stuart his protégée. Her other suitors were less important, except Leicester, who appealed to the least intellectual side of Elizabeth and was always a cause of distraction in her policy and her ministers.

Elizabeth was terribly handicapped by having no heirs of her body and no obvious English successor. She could not afford to recognize Mary’s claim, for that would have been to alienate the Protestants, double the number of Catholics, and, in her own phrase, to spread a winding-sheet before her eyes; for all would have turned to the rising sun. Mary was dangerous enough as it was, and no one would willingly make his rival his heir. Elizabeth could hardly be expected to go out of her way and ask parliament to repeal its own acts for Mary’s sake; probably it would have refused. Nor was it personal enmity on Elizabeth’s part that brought Mary to the block. Parliament had long been ferociously demanding Mary’s execution, not because she was guilty but because she was dangerous to the public peace. She alone could have given the Spanish Armada any real chance of success; and as the prospect of invasion loomed larger on the horizon, fiercer grew the popular determination to remove the only possible centre of a domestic rising, without which the external attack was bound to be a failure. Elizabeth resisted the demand, not from compassion or qualms of conscience, but because she dreaded the responsibility for Mary’s death. She wished Paulet would manage the business on his own account, and when at last her signature was extorted she made a scapegoat of her secretary Davison who had the warrant executed.

The other great difficulty, apart from the succession, with which Elizabeth had to deal arose from the exuberant aggressiveness of England, which she could not, and perhaps did not want to, repress. Religion was not really the cause of her external dangers, for the time had passed for crusades, and no foreign power seriously contemplated an armed invasion of England for religion’s sake. But no state could long tolerate the affronts which English seamen offered Spain. The common view that the British Empire has been won by purely defensive action is not tenable, and from the beginning of her reign Englishmen had taken the offensive, partly from religious but also from other motives. They were determined to break up the Spanish monopoly in the new world, and in the pursuit of this endeavour they were led to challenge Spain in the old. For nearly thirty years Philip put up with the capture of his treasure-ships, the raiding of his colonies and the open assistance rendered to his rebels. Only when he had reached the conclusion that his power would never be secure in the Netherlands or the New World until England was conquered, did he despatch the Spanish Armada. Elizabeth delayed the breach as long as she could, probably because she knew that war meant taxation, and that taxation was the most prolific parent of revolt.

With the defeat of the Spanish Armada Elizabeth’s work was done, and during the last fifteen years of her reign she got more out of touch with her people. That period was one of gradual transition to the conditions of Stuart times; during it practically every claim was put forward that was made under the first two Stuarts either on behalf of parliament or the prerogative, and Elizabeth’s attitude towards the Puritans was hardly distinguishable from James I.’s. But her past was in her favour, and so were her sex and her Tudor tact, which checked the growth of discontent and made Essex’s rebellion a ridiculous fiasco. He was the last and the most wilful but perhaps the best of her favourites, and his tragic fate deepened the gloom of her closing years. The loneliness of a queen who had no husband or children and no relatives to mention must at all times have been oppressive; it grew desolating in old age after the deaths of Leicester, Walsingham, Burghley and Essex, and Elizabeth died, the last of her race, on the 24th of March 1603.

Bishop Creighton’s Queen Elizabeth (1896) is the best biography; there are others by E.S. Beesly (Twelve English Statesmen, 1892); Lucy Aikin, Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth (1818); and T. Wright, Queen Elizabeth and her Times (1838). See also A. Jessopp’s article in the Dict. Nat. Biog.

(A. F. P.)

ELIZABETH [PETROVNA] (1709-1762), Empress of Russia, the daughter of Peter the Great and Martha Skovronskaya, born at Kolomenskoye, near Moscow, on the 18th of December 1709. Even as a child her parts were good, if not brilliant, but unfortunately her education was both imperfect and desultory. Her father had no leisure to devote to her training, and her mother was too illiterate to superintend her studies. She had a French governess, however, and at a later day picked up some Italian, German and Swedish, and could converse in these languages with more fluency than accuracy. From her earliest years she delighted every one by her extraordinary beauty and vivacity. It was Peter’s intention to marry his second daughter to the young French king Louis XV., but the pride of the Bourbons revolted against any such alliance. Other connubial speculations foundered on the personal dislike of the princess for the various suitors proposed to her, so that on the death of her mother (May 1727) and the departure to Holstein of her beloved sister Anne, her only remaining near relation, the princess found herself at the age of eighteen practically her own mistress. So long as Menshikov remained in power, she was treated with liberality and distinction by the government of Peter II., but the Dolgorukis, who supplanted Menshikov and hated the memory of Peter the Great, practically banished Peter’s daughter from court. Elizabeth had inherited her father’s sensual temperament and, being free from all control, abandoned herself to her appetites without reserve. While still in her teens, she made a lover of Alexius Shubin, a sergeant in the Semenovsky Guards, and after his banishment to Siberia, minus his tongue, by order of the empress Anne, consoled herself with a handsome young Cossack, Alexius Razumovski, who, there is good reason to believe, subsequently became her husband. During the reign of her cousin Anne (1730-1740), Elizabeth effaced herself as much as possible; but under the regency of Anne Leopoldovna the course of events compelled the indolent but by no means incapable beauty to overthrow the existing government. The idea seems to have been first suggested to her by the French ambassador, La Chétardie, who was plotting to destroy the Austrian influence then dominant at the Russian court. It is a mistake to suppose, however, that La Chétardie took a leading part in the revolution which placed the daughter of Peter the Great on the Russian throne. As a matter of fact, beyond lending the tsesarevna 2000 ducats, instead of the 15,000 she demanded of him, he took no part whatever in the actual coup d’état which was as great a surprise to him as to every one else. The merit and glory of that singular affair belong to Elizabeth alone. The fear of being imprisoned in a convent for the rest of her life was the determining cause of her irresistible outburst of energy. At midnight on the 6th of December 1741, with a few personal friends, including her physician, Armand Lestocq, her chamberlain, Michael Ilarionvich Vorontsov, her future husband, Alexius Razumovski, and Alexander and Peter Shuvalov, two of the gentlemen of her household, she drove to the barracks of the Preobrazhensky Guards, enlisted their sympathies by a stirring speech, and led them to the Winter Palace, where the regent was reposing in absolute security. Having on the way thither had all the ministers arrested, she seized the regent and her children in their beds, and summoned all the notables, civil and ecclesiastical, to her presence. So swiftly and noiselessly indeed had the whole revolution proceeded that as late as eight o’clock the next morning very few people in the city were aware of it. Thus, at the age of three-and-thirty, this naturally indolent and self-indulgent woman, with little knowledge and no experience of affairs, suddenly found herself at the head of a great empire at one of the most critical periods of its existence. Fortunately for herself, and for Russia, Elizabeth Petrovna, with all her shortcomings, had inherited some of her father’s genius for government. Her usually keen judgment and her diplomatic tact again and again recall Peter the Great. What in her sometimes seemed irresolution and procrastination, was, most often, a wise suspense of judgment under exceptionally difficult circumstances; and to this may be added that she was ever ready to sacrifice the prejudices of the woman to the duty of the sovereign.

After abolishing the cabinet council system in favour during the rule of the two Annes, and reconstituting the senate as it had been under Peter the Great,—with the chiefs of the departments of state, all of them now Russians again, as ex-officio members under the presidency of the sovereign,—the first care of the new empress was to compose her quarrel with Sweden. On the 23rd of January 1743, direct negotiations between the two powers were opened at Åbo, and on the 7th of August 1743 Sweden ceded to Russia all the southern part of Finland east of the river Kymmene, which thus became the boundary between the two states, including the fortresses of Villmanstrand and Fredrikshamn. This triumphant issue was mainly due to the diplomatic ability of the new vice chancellor, Alexius Bestuzhev-Ryumin (q.v.), whom Elizabeth, much as she disliked him personally, had wisely placed at the head of foreign affairs immediately after her accession. He represented the anti-Franco-Prussian portion of her council, and his object was to bring about an Anglo-Austro-Russian alliance which, at that time, was undoubtedly Russia’s proper system. Hence the reiterated attempts of Frederick the Great and Louis XV. to get rid of Bestuzhev, which made the Russian court during the earlier years of Elizabeth’s reign the centre of a tangle of intrigue impossible to unravel by those who do not possess the clue to it (see Bestuzhev-Ryumin, Alexius). Ultimately, however, the minister, strong in the support of Elizabeth, prevailed, and his faultless diplomacy, backed by the despatch of an auxiliary Russian corps of 30,000 men to the Rhine, greatly accelerated the peace negotiations which led to the treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle (October 18, 1748). By sheer tenacity of purpose, Bestuzhev had extricated his country from the Swedish imbroglio; reconciled his imperial mistress with the courts of Vienna and London, her natural allies; enabled Russia to assert herself effectually in Poland, Turkey and Sweden, and isolated the restless king of Prussia by environing him with hostile alliances. But all this would have been impossible but for the steady support of Elizabeth, who trusted him implicitly, despite the insinuations of the chancellor’s innumerable enemies, most of whom were her personal friends.

The great event of Elizabeth’s later years was the Seven Years’ War. Elizabeth rightly regarded the treaty of Westminster (January 16, 1756, whereby Great Britain and Prussia agreed to unite their forces to oppose the entry into, or the passage through, Germany of the troops of every foreign power) as utterly subversive of the previous conventions between Great Britain and Russia. A by no means unwarrantable fear of the king of Prussia, who was “to be reduced within proper limits,” so that “he might be no longer a danger to the empire,” induced Elizabeth to accede to the treaty of Versailles, in other words the Franco-Austrian league against Prussia, and on the 17th of May 1757 the Russian army, 85,000 strong, advanced against Königsberg. Neither the serious illness of the empress, which began with a fainting-fit at Tsarskoe Selo (September 19, 1757), nor the fall of Bestuzhev (February 21, 1758), nor the cabals and intrigues of the various foreign powers at St Petersburg, interfered with the progress of the war, and the crushing defeat of Kunersdorf (August 12, 1759) at last brought Frederick to the verge of ruin. From that day forth he despaired of success, though he was saved for the moment by the jealousies of the Russian and Austrian commanders, which ruined the military plans of the allies. On the other hand, it is not too much to say that, from the end of 1759 to the end of 1761, the unshakable firmness of the Russian empress was the one constraining political force which held together the heterogeneous, incessantly jarring elements of the anti-Prussian combination. From the Russian point of view, Elizabeth’s greatness as a statesman consists in her steady appreciation of Russian interests, and her determination to promote them at all hazards. She insisted throughout that the king of Prussia must be rendered harmless to his neighbours for the future, and that the only way to bring this about was to reduce him to the rank of an elector. Frederick himself was quite alive to his danger. “I am at the end of my resources,” he wrote at the beginning of 1760, “the continuance of this war means for me utter ruin. Things may drag on perhaps till July, but then a catastrophe must come.” On the 21st of May 1760 a fresh convention was signed between Russia and Austria, a secret clause of which, never communicated to the court of Versailles, guaranteed East Prussia to Russia, as an indemnity for war expenses. The failure of the campaign of 1760, so far as Russia and France were concerned, induced the court of Versailles, on the evening of the 22nd of January 1761, to present to the court of St Petersburg a despatch to the effect that the king of France by reason of the condition of his dominions absolutely desired peace. On the following day the Austrian ambassador, Esterhazy, presented a despatch of a similar tenor from his court. The Russian empress’s reply was delivered to the two ambassadors on the 12th of February. It was inspired by the most uncompromising hostility towards the king of Prussia. Elizabeth would not consent to any pacific overtures until the original object of the league had been accomplished. Simultaneously, Elizabeth caused to be conveyed to Louis XV. a confidential letter in which she proposed the signature of a new treaty of alliance of a more comprehensive and explicit nature than the preceding treaties between the two powers, without the knowledge of Austria. Elizabeth’s object in this mysterious negotiation seems to have been to reconcile France and Great Britain, in return for which signal service France was to throw all her forces into the German war. This project, which lacked neither ability nor audacity, foundered upon Louis XV.’s invincible jealousy of the growth of Russian influence in eastern Europe and his fear of offending the Porte. It was finally arranged by the allies that their envoys at Paris should fix the date for the assembling of a peace congress, and that, in the meantime, the war against Prussia should be vigorously prosecuted. The campaign of 1761 was almost as abortive as the campaign of 1760. Frederick acted on the defensive with consummate skill, and the capture of the Prussian fortress of Kolberg on Christmas day O.S. 1761, by Rumyantsev, was the sole Russian success. Frederick, however, was now at the last gasp. On the 6th of January 1762, he wrote to Finkenstein, “We ought now to think of preserving for my nephew, by way of negotiation, whatever fragments of my territory we can save from the avidity of my enemies,” which means, if words mean anything, that he was resolved to seek a soldier’s death on the first opportunity. A fortnight later he wrote to Prince Ferdinand of Brunswick, “The sky begins to clear. Courage, my dear fellow. I have received the news of a great event.” The great event which snatched him from destruction was the death of the Russian empress (January 5, 1762).