AUREUS AUSONIUS. 



311 



unfortunate father, Shah Jehan, succeeded to the 

 throne. Aureoc-Zebe was distinguished, when a 

 youth, for his serious look, his frequent prayers, his 

 love of solitude, his profound hypocrisy, and his deep 

 plans. He caused himself to be received among the 

 fakirs, wore their habit, and wished to visit the tomb 

 of the great prophet at Medina. But in his twenti- 

 eth year, he laid aside the Koran, which he had 

 hitherto carried in his bosom, raised a body of troops 

 by liis address and good fortune, and obtained the 

 government of the Deccan. Here, wishing to give 

 the fakirs a proof of his love and friendship, he in- 

 vited them to a feast, and compelled them, notwith- 

 standing their resistance, to put on new and decent 

 clothing. He burned the old clothes, and found 

 therein a quantity of gold and silver pieces, which 

 did him good service when he came to carry on war 

 with his brother. He stirred up dissensions between 

 his brothers, made use of the assistance of one 

 against the other, and finally shut his father up in 

 his harem, where he kept him prisoner. He then 

 murderc'd his relatives, one after the other, and, in 

 1659, ascended the throne of Hindostan, and took 

 the name of Aalem Guyr. Notwithstanding the 

 means by which he had got possession of power, lie 

 governed with much wisdom, consulted the welfare 

 of his people, watched over the preservation of jus- 

 tice, and the purity of manners, and sought to con- 

 firm his own power. Two of his sons, who endea- 

 voured to form a party in their own favour, he caused 

 to be arrested and put to death by slow poison. He 

 carried on many wars, conquered Golconda and 

 Visiapour, and drove out, by degrees, the Mahrattas 

 from their country. Aurungabad, once his residence, 

 now desolate, Seely has described in his Wonders of 

 Elora (London, 1824). After his death, the Mogul 

 empire declined, wars immediately broke out between 

 his sons, and several conquered provinces sought to 

 make themselves independent. 



AUREUS, or AUREUS NUMMUS ; the first gold coin 

 which was coined in Rome, 546 A. U., in the second 

 I'unic war. It weighed two denarii and one quina- 

 rius, and was worth 25 denarii, or 100 sesterces 

 (Suet. Oth. 4 ; Tacit. Hist. i. 24). In later times, it 

 was called solidtts, but had diminished in value. At 

 first, forty aurei were made out of a pound ; under 

 Nero, forty-five ; under Constantine, seventy-two. 

 It was about as much as a ducat, or nine shillings 

 sterling. 



AURICULAR CONFESSION. See Confession. 



AURIGA, in astronomy ; the Wagoner (;*) ; a 

 constellation of the northern hemisphere, containing 

 sixty-six stars, according to the British catalo-rue. 



AURORA (Greek, nut) ; in mythology, daughter of 

 Hyperion and Thia, and sister of Sol and Luna. She 

 was one of the ancient goddesses of the race of the 

 Titans, but retained her rank among the later race 

 of gods. To the Titan Astrzeus, son of Crius, she 

 bore the Winds, Zephyrus, Boreas, and Notus, the 

 Morning star, and the Constellations. She rises from 

 the ocean, drawn by the celestial horses Lampus and 

 I'liiieton, and, with rosy fingers, raises the veil of 

 night, shedding light upon the world, until she flies 

 from the splendour of day. Among the mortals 

 whose beauty captivated the goddess, poets mention 

 Orion, Tithonus, and Cephalus. . 



AURORA AUSTRALIS. See Aurora Borealis. 



AURORA BOREALIS (French, aurore bore ale ; Ger- 

 man, Nordlicht) ; northern light. We often see in 

 the north, near the horizon, usually a short time after 

 sunset, a dark segment of a circle, surrounded by a 

 brilliant arch of white or fiery light ; and this arch is 

 often separated into sever,) 1 concentric arches, leav- 

 ing the dark segment visible between them. From 

 these arches, and from the dark segment itself, in 



high latitudes, columns of light, of the most varie- 

 gated and beautiful colours, shoot up towards the ze- 

 nith, and, sometimes, masses like sheaves of light 

 are scattered in all directions. The. appearance U 

 then splendid ; and its increasing beauty is announced 

 by a general undulation of the masses of light. A 

 kind of fiery coronet is afterwards formed about the 

 zenith, by the meeting of all the columns of light, 

 resembling the knob of a tent. At this moment, the 

 spectacle is magnificent, both for the multiplicity and 

 beauty of the columns which the aurora presents, 

 (compare Maupertuis De la Figure de la Terre. Paris, 

 1738). The light, after this, grows fainter and more 

 tranquil. This faintness and tranquillity, however, 

 are only temporary, for the phenomena are soon re- 

 peated in all their beauty the oscillations of the 

 columns of light, the formation of the corona, and 

 the like, though with a thousand variations. At 

 length the motion wholly ceases, the light is collected 

 about the northern horizon, the dark segment van- 

 ishes, and nothing is left but a strong brightness in 

 the north, which is lost in the dawning day. These 

 brilliant appearances are also attended, in high lati- 

 tudes, with loud noises, described as resembling the 

 hissing and crackling of fireworks. This appearance 

 has received the name of northern light, because, on 

 account of our position on the earth, we see it only 

 about the north pole. A similar appearance, aurora 

 australis, was seen about the south pole, in 1773, by 

 Cook's sailors, between 58 and 60 S. lat., and later 

 travellers have observed the same. These pheno- 

 mena ought, therefore, properly to be called polar 

 lights. Philosophers are of different opinions as to 

 the cause of the aurora. It is, however, satisfacto- 

 rily ascertained to be within the region of our atmo- 

 sphere. Heli ascribed it to the reflection of the sun 

 and moon by the clouds of snow and needles of ice, 

 which are constantly floating in the atmosphere of 

 the frigid zones. Mairan supposed it to proceed from 

 the atmosphere of the sun. Bailly ascribed it to 

 magnetism, and its remarkable influence on the nee- 

 dle has been generally observed. Franklin attri- 

 buted it to electricity. Biot, who was sent to the 

 Shetland islands in 1817, by the French academy of 

 sciences to determine the length of the pendulum vi- 

 brating seconds, had an opportunity, Aug. 27 of the 

 same year, of observing the aurora borealis, in all its 

 splendour, at the island of Uist. On this occasion, 

 he ascribed to the phenomenon a volcanic origin, and 

 his reasoning is given at length in the Journal des 

 Savans for 1820. His description of this wonderful 

 phenomenon is to be found in Biot's Precis Elemen- 

 taire de Physique, 3d ed., Paris, 1824, vol. ii. p. 99, 

 et seq. An ingenious hint of Kastner, advanced in 

 the sixth edition of Gren's Physik (Physics), Halle, 

 1820, is deserving of attention. He considers polar 

 lights as the electricity of the earth rising periodically 

 to the poles. Observations on this appearance were 

 communicated by Richardson and Hood, in the ap- 

 pendix to Franklin's Narrative of a Journey to tho 

 Shores of the Polar Sea, in 1819, &c. London, 1823, 

 1824. A series also of interesting observations on 

 this subject, made in December, 1829, by the Rev. 

 James Farquharson, of Aberdeenshire, with an ap- 

 paratus transmitted to him by the Royal Society of 

 London, will be found published in the Transactions 

 of that Society for 1830. 



AUSONIUS, Decius Magnus, the most celebrated 

 Roman poet of the 4th century, was born at Burdi - 

 gala (Bordeaux), about the year 310. He studied 

 under several distinguished masters, and became, at 

 last, protessor of rhetoric in his native city, whence 

 his fame extended through the whole empire. Valen- 

 tin ian intrusted to him the education of his son Gra- 

 tian, and appointed him afterwards questor and pre- 



