815 



ELOCUTION. 



EMBANKMENT. 



846 



shoots are used in some parts of the Continent to feed cattle and pigs, 

 and even silkworms. In some parts of Russia the leaves are used as a 

 substitute for tea. The bark is useful as an astringent medicine, and 

 the inner bark for making nets and ropes. The bark and leaves yield 

 an adhesive substance, which may be used as glue. The bark, kiln- 

 dried and ground, and mixed with flour, is used by gome of the poor in 

 Norway for bread. 



The above details relate to the common elm. The Scotch or wych- 

 elm is equally useful. The timber is much prized by ship-builders, 

 boat-builders, block-makers, pump-makers, cartwrights, cabinetmakers, 

 and coach-makers. For floor-timbers of ships, naves and shafts of 

 vehicles, swingle-trees for heavy gun-carriages, dyers' and printers' 

 rollers, wheelbarrows, and the handles of agricultural implements, the 

 wych-elm is much used, because it cleaves well without splintering. 

 The bark, which is very tough, and strips off easily, is applicable to a 

 great variety of useful purposes. 



ELOCUTION. [ORATORY.] 



E'LOGE, in the French language means praise, being derived from 

 the Latin el6gium, and that from the Greek eulogia (fii\oyia). It has 

 become the name of a considerable branch of French literature, which 

 comprehends panegyrical orations in honour of distinguished deceased 

 persons. It is the custom when one of the members of the French or 

 other academies dies, and a new member is appointed in his place, for 

 the new member to deliver a panegyrical oration on the labours and 

 other merits of his predecessor. These eloges are generally printed and 

 published, and although they are mostly written in a florid rhetorical 

 style, still many of them are really interesting biographies. Such, for 

 example, are the eloges written by Cuvier and Arago on several of their 

 brother academicians. [CuviEB and AHAQO, in Bioo. Drv.] The custom 

 of writing eloges of deceased persons is not confined to members of 

 academies. Bailly wrote ' Eloges de Charles V., de Moliere, de Cor- 

 neille, de 1'Abbe de la Caille, et de Leibnitz,' Berlin, 1770. The Italians 

 have also ' Elogii degli Uomini Illustri Toscani,' 3 vols., fol., Firenze, 

 1766-70, and many other similar compositions. 



ELONGATION, an astronomical term for the angular distance 

 between two heavenly bodies as seen from the earth. Custom has 

 confined it to the case in which both bodies are in the solar system, 

 and one of them is generally the sun. Thus we speak of the 

 ttiitanct of two fixed stars, and of the elongation of Mercury from the 

 sun. 



Kl.OQI'EXCE. [OBATORY.] 



ELUL, b-ls. the last month of the civil year of the Hebrews, 

 coinciding, when earliest, nearly with our August ; when latest, with 

 our September. The origin of the name is doubtful : older Hebrew 



philologers derived it from the word b N 7 f ?>" uotnm g" because nothing 



remains in the ground, at that season ! Recent savants more wisely 

 profess their ignorance. Benfey's derivation from the Zend Ham-vat, 

 through the old Persian month Clmnlad, would seem at first sight 

 absurd, a mere result of dexterous letter-shifting ; but if we look at the 

 not unfrequent interchange of d and I (OSu<r<rut, Ulysses ; lacryma, 

 Sjmpu, &c.), particularly in the case of the combination rd in old Persian, 

 as in tharda, a year, modern tal ; icarda, a rose, modern ;,id ; we may 

 be induced to suspend our condemnation ; more especially when we 

 consider that Chordad was the sixth mouth in the Persian cdendar, as 

 Elul was in that of the Jews until the middle of the 4th century, A.D. 

 It is moreover well known that the names of the months now in use do 

 not occur in any of the books of the Bible written before the captivity, 

 which ultimately brought the Jews under the domination of Persia. 

 Elul is found in the 6th chapter of Nehemiah, 15th verse, where the 

 completion of the walls of Jerusalem is recorded ; it is also found in 

 the apocrypha, in Maccabees xiv., 27. 



Two festivals are held in this month ; the first is that of the Dedi- 

 cation of the walla of Jerusalem by Nehemiah, on the seventh day of 

 Elul ; the other is that of the expulsion of the Greeks, on the seven- 

 teenth. Some Jews observe a fast on the seventeenth day, in memory 

 of the death of the spies who brought back an evil report of the 

 Promised Land ; Numbers, xiv., 37. 



Klul has only twenty-nine days. 



KI.UTRIATION, the process of separating substances reduced to 

 ]K>wder, when of different specific gravities, by means of water. It is 

 also employed as a method of reducing any one substance to a fine 

 powder ; thus the creta pneparata, or prepared chalk of the ' London 

 Pharmacopoeia,' is prepared by mixing finely-powdered chalk with water, 

 stirring the mixture, and while it is yet turbid allowing the upper 

 portion of the water to run off; and when this is allowed to settle, the 

 chalk or any other substance similarly treated settles in a very fine 

 powder. By the process of elutriation ores, especially those of tin, are 

 operated from earthy matter. 



ELYTSIUM, the name given by the ancient Greeks and Romans to 

 the abode of the righteous after death. They fancied that there was, 

 somewhere to the west, a region blessed with perpetual spring, clothed 

 with continual verdure, enamelled with flowers, shaded by pleasant 

 grove*, and refreshed by never-failing springs, where the souln of the 

 repaired, and where they enjoyed each other's society. (Virgil, 

 ' ..Eneid,' vi., with which compare the notion of Elysium in the 

 ' Odywey,' iv., 568.) The " Inlands of the Blent " was another name 



for this favoured region, which some placed in the midst of the ocean 

 in the farthest west, others in some inaccessible spot in the middle of 

 Asia or Africa. From this notion the appellation of Elysian Fields 

 came to be given to certain delightful secluded spots, such as the strip 

 of land on the northern shore of the Mare Morto, or the inner part of 

 the harbour of Misenum near Naples. It seems to have been originally 

 a vast cemetery, planted with trees and adorned with tombs ; but the 

 imagination of the poets confounded the repository of the perishable 

 bodies with the abode of the immortal souls. The Mare Morto was 

 the Acheron through which the dead were wafted to their final 

 abode. Those ancient philosophers who had more spiritual notions of 

 the nature of souls discarded the vulgar idea of the Elysium being 

 in any part of our globe, and placed the abode of the departed in the 

 heavens or firmament. (Cicero, ' Somnium Scipionis.') 



EMANCIPATION, Emancipate. To understand the legal effect 

 of emancipation by the Roman law, it must be premised that all 

 children born in lawful marriage were said to be in the father's power, 

 as well as all his son's children so born before the son was emancipated ; 

 and no person who was in the power of another could acquire any 

 property of his own. (Gains, ii. 86, &c.) Whatever property, then, a 

 son acquired while in his father's power strictly belonged to his father. 

 If the son was by will appointed heir (hseres in the Roman sense), he 

 could not accept without his father's consent, and all that he took was 

 for the benefit of his father : the same rule held as to a legacy. It is 

 unnecessary here to mention the exceptions to the general rule above 

 laid down, or to describe the father's power over the son's person. 

 " There is hardly any nation," observes Gains (i. 55), " in which fathers 

 have such power over their children as we have." The rigour of the 

 ancient Roman law, however, was gradually relaxed, though the 

 remarks of Gaius, who wrote at least after the time of Antoninus 

 Pius, show that it was not then entirely fallen into disuse. The 

 father's power was dissolved by his natural death, and also by the civil 

 death of the father or the son. (Gaius, i. 128.) 



Emancipation was the act by which the power was dissolved or 

 released in the lifetime of the father ; and it required the consent of 

 both parties. The emancipation, which was made according to the 

 Laws of the Twelve Tables, was effected by an imaginary sale from 

 the father to another person. In the case of a son, this sale was made 

 three times, as if the fatuer were selling a slave, and the person to 

 whom the sale was made, who of course was some friend, manumitted 

 the son after each sale. After each of the first two sales, the son, 

 being manumitted, became again in his father's power ; but the last 

 manumission was final, and extinguished all the father's paternal 

 rights. It was however usual for the son, after the third sale, to be 

 resold to his natural father, who then manumitted him, and thus 

 acquired the rights of a patrouus over his emancipated son, which 

 would otherwise have belonged to the purchaser who gave him his 

 final manumission. In the case of a daughter or a grandson, a single 

 sale and manumission was sufficient. (Gaius, i. 132 ; ' Dig.,' lib. 28, 

 tit. 3, 1. 8 ; ' Cod.,' lib. 8, tit. 49, 1. 6 ; ' Instit.,' lib. i , tit. 12, e. 6.) 



The Emancipatio Anastasiana, or that introduced by the Emperor 

 Anastasius, was by Imperial Rescript. (' Cod.,' lib. viii , tit. 49, 1. 0.) 



The Emancipatio Justiniana was effected by a simple declaration of 

 a father before the proper magistrate, that he released his son from the 

 paternal authority ; but the father still retained the rights of a 

 patronus over his emancipated son. (Ibid. 1. 6.) 



The immediate legal effect of emancipation was, that the person 

 emancipated possessed over his own children the paternal right : he 

 could acquire property, and bequeath it by will. If a son married 

 and had children before he was emancipated, his children were in the 

 power of their grandfather, who could emancipate them without 

 emancipating their father ; and such emancipation continued in force 

 after the grandfather's death. 



It was also a consequence of emancipation that the emancipated 

 children stood to their father in the relation of strangers, and con- 

 sequently, in case of intestacy, could not take the parent's property, 

 which could only be claimed by those who corresponded to the legal 

 description of heredes sui, agnati, and gentile's. But this injustice of 

 the civil law (juris iniquitates), observes Gaius, was remedied by the 

 praetor's edict, or, as we should term it, the equity, which was 

 gradually introduced in order to soften the rigour and strict rules of 

 the civil law. [EDICT.] The pnctor's edict, however, did not extend 

 to give the game advantage to an emancipated son in succeeding to the 

 property of an intestate brother. The Emperor Anastasius remedied 

 this under certain restrictions; and finally Justinian put emancipated 

 and non-emancipated brothers and sisters and their children on the 

 same footing in all respects as to sharing in the property of a deceased 

 parent or brother or sister. (' Cod.,' lib. vi., tit. 57 ; ' Instit.,' lib. in., 

 tit. 6.) 



As to emancipation under the Code Napole'on, see liv. i., chap. 3, 

 tit. 10. 



EMBALMING. [MUMMY.] 



EMBANKMENT, in civil engineering, a mound, or heap of earth, 

 thrown up for the purpose of forming a roadway at a level different 

 from that of the natural surface of the ground ; or for the purpose of 

 either regulating the flow of a river or a navigable canal, or of defend- 

 ing low-lying districts from the effects of floods, storms, or high tides 

 in rivers, or upon the shores of lakes or seas. In military engineering, 



