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786 648 feet. Its plan is somewhat irregular, and it is divided into seven wards. Excellent railroad connexions are afforded by the Chicago, Burlington, and Quincy, the Chicago and North-Western and the Elgin, Joliet, and Eastern railways. Agricultural tools and machines are the chief manufactures. The shops of the Chicago, Burlington, and Quincy railway, employing upwards of 2000 hands, are situated here. The silver-plate works are also one of the largest industries in the city. It was settled in 1834. Population (1880), 11,873; (1890), 19,688; (1900), 24,147.

Aurora, a city of Lawrence county, Missouri, U.S.A., on the St Louis and San Francisco railway, at its junction with a branch of the Kansas City, Fort Scott, and Memphis railway, in the neighbourhood of a lead and zinc mining region. Population (1890), 3489; (1900), 6191.

Aurora polaris. See A TMOSPHERIC E LECTRICITY.

Aussig (Czech Oustí nad Labem), the chief town of a government district in Bohemia, Austria; a considerable river port on the Elbe. Population in 1890, 23,723; in 1900, 40,000; almost exclusively German and Catholic (2 per cent. Czech, 5 per cent. Protestant, and 2 per cent. Jewish). The adjoining communes of Kletsche and Schönpriesen were incorporated in 1899. In 1857 there were only 6404 inhabitants. All branches of industry and trade show great progress. The port, which was extended in 1891, was entered in 1896 by 1700 passenger and 1776 freight steamers, together with 7800 sailing vessels and towed barges. The principal articles forwarded are lignite, coal, sugar, stone and stoneware, corn, fruit, flour, cotton, rice, oil, fat, salt, and petroleum. In addition to the important textile, chemical, and boat-building industries, &c., its manufactures now comprise paraffin, oils, tar, colouring stuffs, machinery, glass, pianos, leather, malt, &c. Aussig was the birthplace of the painter Raphael Mengs (1728-79).

Austin, capital of Mower county, Minnesota, U.S.A., on the Red Cedar river, at an altitude of 1200 feet. The plan is quite regular, and the city is on the Chicago and Great Western, and the Chicago, Milwaukee, and St Paul railways. Population (1880), 2305; (1890), 3901; (1900), 5474.

Austin, capital of Travis county, and of the state of Texas, U.S.A., in 30° 16' N. lat. and 97° 43' W. long., on the north bank of the Colorado. The river is not navigable. The city is divided into eleven wards; the site is level and the plan regular. The surrounding country is a rich agricultural region, producing cotton as its principal crop. The finest building is the capitol, which the state obtained by bartering 3,000,000 acres of land in the "Pan Handle." It is said to have cost $4,500,000. The city contains a number of state institutions; among them the Lunatic Asylum, the Deaf and Dumb Asylum, the Blind Asylum, and the University of Texas. The last had 65 instructors and 800 students in 1899. Austin has three railways—the Houston and Texas Central, the International and Great Northern, and the Austin and North-Western. It received its name from Stephen Austin, a prominent man in the early history of Texas. Its site was selected, and the city built to serve as the capital, work on it having been commenced in 1839, immediately after the separation of Texas from Mexico. Population(1880), 11,013; (1890), 14,575; (1900), 22,258.

Austin, Alfred (1835-____), English Poet-laureate, was born at Headingley, near Leeds, 30th May 1835. His father, Joseph Austin, was a merchant of the city of Leeds; his mother, a sister of Joseph Locke, M.P. for Honiton. Mr Austin was educated at Stonyhurst, Oscott, and London University, where he graduated in 1853. He was called to the bar four years later, and practised as a barrister for a short time; but in 1861, after two comparatively false starts in poetry and fiction, he made his first noteworthy appearance as a writer with a satire called The Season, which contained incisive lines, and was marked by some promise both in wit and observation. In 1870 he published a volume of criticism, The Poetry of the Period, which was again conceived in a spirit of satirical invective, and attacked Tennyson, Browning, Matthew Arnold, and Mr Swinburne in no half-hearted fashion. The book aroused some discussion at the time, but its judgments were extremely uncritical. In 1881 Mr Austin returned to verse with a tragedy, Savonarola, to which he added Soliloquies in 1882, Prince Lucifer in 1887, England's Darling in 1896, and The Conversion of Winckelmann in 1897. For several years he edited The National Review, and has written many leading articles in the columns of The Standard. On Tennyson's death in 1892 it was felt that none of the then living poets, except Mr Swinburne or Mr William Morris, who were disqualified on other grounds, was of sufficient distinction to succeed to the laurel crown, and for several years no new Poet-laureate was nominated. In the interval the claims of one writer and another were much canvassed, but eventually, in 1896, Mr Austin was appointed. Since then he has written several occasional poems, suggested by contemporary events (in particular, the Jameson Raid), which have not escaped criticism. The chief characteristic of Mr Austin's poetry, as of the best of his prose, is a genuine and intimate love of nature. His prose idylls, The Garden that I love and In Veronica's Garden, are full of a pleasant, open-air flavour, which is also the outstanding feature of his English Lyrics. His lyrical poems are wanting in spontaneity and individuality, but many of them possess a simple, orderly charm, as of an English country lane. He has, indeed, a true love of England, sometimes not without a suspicion of insularity, but always fresh and ingenuous. In dramatic poetry he is less successful. His laureate poems have been considerably below the level of his earlier achievements; but it was a very unenviable task to assume the laurel in succession to two poets whose work is among the richest in English literature.

Australasia, a term used by English geographers in a sense nearly synonymous with the Oceania of Continental writers. It thus comprises all the insular groups which extend almost continuously from the south-eastern extremity of Asia to more than half-way across the Pacific. Its chief divisions are Malaysia with the Philippines; Australia with Tasmania and New Zealand; Melanesia, that is, New Guinea, New Britain, New Ireland, and York, the Solomons, New Hebrides, Santa Cruz, Fiji, Loyalties, and New Caledonia; Micronesia, that is, the Ladrones, Pelew, and Carolines, with the Marshall and Gilbert groups; lastly, Polynesia, that is, Samoa, Tonga, Cook, Tahiti, the Marquesas, Ellice, Hawaii, and all intervening clusters. The term is so far justified in that it harmonizes better than Oceania did with the names of the other continents, and also embodies the two essential facts that it is a south-eastern extension of Asia, and that its central and most important division is the great island-continent of Australia. In a more restricted sense the term Australasia corresponds to the large division including Australia, Tasmania, and New Zealand.

See Australasia, 2 vols. Stanford Compendium Series, new issue. London, 1893-94.