ACTON 



27 



ADAMS 



bravely, but was finally overcome. See AN- 

 TONY; CLEOPATRA. 



ACTON, JOHN KMERICH EDWARD DALBERG, 

 first Baron Acton (1834-1902), the most prom- 

 inent Roman Catholic layman in England dur- 

 ing the nineteenth century, and a distinguished 

 historian. He was born in Naples, was educated 

 under Cardinal Newman and at the University 

 of Munich, for, being a Roman Catholic, he 

 could not then obtain a degree at Cambridge. 

 He traveled extensively, but at the age of 

 :ity-five settled in England and became a 

 follower of Gladstone. As a liberal Roman 

 Catholic and as editor of The Rambler, one 

 of the most brilliant publications of the time, 

 he offended many of the more conservative 

 among the Catholic party. Entering Parlia- 

 ment, he served until 1865 and was raised to 

 the peerage in 1869. In 1892 he was appointed 

 Regius Professor of Modern History at Cam- 

 bridge University, where he planned, and partly 

 edited, the Cambridge Modern History, in ten 

 large volumes. His library of 80,000 volumes 

 was purchased by Andrew Carnegie and after- 

 wards was given to Viscount Morley, who pre- 

 sented it to Cambridge University. 



ACTS OF THE APOSTLES, the fifth book 

 of the New Testament, written by Luke to 

 form a sequel to his Gospel. In it he gives a 

 >ry of the foundation and growth of the 

 Christian Church from its small beginning in 

 Judea on the Day of Pentecost up to the time 

 when Paul introduced it into Asia Minor, 

 Greece and Rome. He describes the persecu- 

 tion of the Jews as the Church grew in size, 

 until they fled from Judea into Samaria and 

 Syria, taking their new religion with them and 

 spreading it. Later the church at Antioch prcw 

 to be the headquarters from which Paul worked 

 into the wider field. 



ADAM AND EVE. In the Biblical story of 

 Creation, recounted in the book of Genesis, 

 it is told that God created as the fir>t parents 

 of the human race two beings who were culled 

 Adam and Eve. In this narrative Eve was 

 created as a helpmate for Adam, out of one 

 of his ribs, and the two lived in the beautiful 

 Garden of Eden to keep guard over it. 

 Tempted by One, in the form of a 



serpent, to cat of the forbidden "tree of 

 knowledge of good and <-vil," they fell from 

 grace and were driven by the Lord from the 

 Garden. Adam is recorded as dying at the 

 age of 930, leaving numerous descendants; 

 not tin- slightest evidence as to the 

 age of Eve at her death. Among the sons of 



Adam and Eve, Cain, Abel and Seth are specifi- 

 cally mentioned. See CAIN; ABEL. 



ADAMS, CHARLES FRANCIS (1807-1886), an 

 American diplomat and political leader, who, 

 as minister to Great Britain from 1861 to 1868, 

 earned for himself a place in American diplo- 

 macy second only to that of Benjamin Frank- 

 lin. Largely through his efforts Great Britain 

 and France refrained from giving active recog- 

 nition and aid to the Confederate states. He 

 was born in Boston, but his boyhood was spent 

 in Russia and England, where his father, John 

 Quincy Adams, was United States minister. 

 Only a few years after his graduation from 

 Harvard College in 1825, he was the recognized 

 leader of the New England Whigs and in 1848 

 was nominated by the Free Soil party for 

 Vice-President on the ticket with Martin Van 

 Buren, but defeated for election. In 1871 he 

 represented the United States in the settle- 

 ment of the Alabama Claims (see ALABAMA, 

 THE), and in the next year he took a leading 

 part in organizing the Liberal Republicans. 



ADAMS, CHARLES KENDALL (1835-1902), an 

 American educator and historian, who intro- 

 duced into the United States from Germany a 

 new method of studying history, known as the 

 seminar, or seminary, by which the students do 

 original research work along special lines. He 

 was born at Derby, Vt., and was educated at 

 the University of Michigan and in Germany, 

 France and Italy. In 1869-1870 he established 

 at the University of Michigan the first Amer- 

 ican historical seminar. Between 1885 and 

 1902 he was at the head of two great universi- 

 ties, serving as president of Cornell from 1885 

 to 1892, and as president of the University of 

 Wisconsin from 1893 until shortly before his 

 death. He was the chief editor of Johnson's 

 Universal Cyclopedia, and the author of sev- 

 I books, most important of which is A 

 Manual of Historical Literature. 



ADAMS, FRANK DAWSON (1859- ). a 

 Canadian geologist and educator, known espe- 

 cially for his researches on mctamorphism and 

 : crystalline rocks of the earth. He 

 was bora at Montreal, where he attended the 

 high school and McGill University; later he 

 stu<! tie University and at Heidelberg, 



:iiany, where in 1892 he received the degree 

 of Doctor of Philosophy. !!< was appointed 

 professor of geology at McGill University in 

 1803, and became dean of the faculty of applied 

 science in 1908. Dean Adams has published 

 numerous special reports on the geology of 



Canada. 



