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 Treub, van Oppenraag and Vlaming, The Right to Life of the Unborn Child (New York, 1903); L. Hochheimer, Crimes and Criminal Procedure (New York, 1897); A. A. Tardieu, Étude medico-légal sur l’avortement (Paris, 1904); F. Berolzheimer, System der Rechts- und Wissenschaftsphilosophie (Munich, 1904).

ABOUKIR, a village on the Mediterranean coast of Egypt, 14 m. N.E. of Alexandria by rail, containing a castle used as a state prison by Mehemet Ali. Near the village are many remains of ancient buildings, Egyptian, Greek and Roman. About 2 m. S.E. of the village are ruins supposed to mark the site of Canopus. A little farther east the Canopic branch of the Nile (now dry) entered the Mediterranean.

Stretching eastward as far as the Rosetta mouth of the Nile is the spacious bay of Aboukir, where on the 1st of August 1798 Nelson fought the battle of the Nile, often referred to as the battle of Aboukir. The latter title is applied more properly to an engagement between the French expeditionary army and the Turks fought on the 25th of July 1799. Near Aboukir, on the 8th of March 1801, the British army commanded by Sir R. Abercromby landed from its transports in the face of a strenuous opposition from a French force entrenched on the beach. (See .) ABOUT, EDMOND FRANÇOIS VALENTIN (1828–1885), French novelist, publicist and journalist, was born on the 14th of February 1828, at Dieuze, in Lorraine. The boy’s school career was brilliant. In 1848 he entered the École Normale, taking the second place in the annual competition for admission, Taine being first. Among his college contemporaries were Taine, Francisque, Sarcey, Challemel-Lacour and the ill-starred Prévost-Paradol. Of them all About was, according to Sarcey, the most highly vitalized, exuberant, brilliant and “undisciplined.” At the end of his college career he joined the French school in Athens, but if we may believe his own account, it had never been his intention to follow the professorial career, for which the École Normale was a preparation, and in 1853 he returned to France and frankly gave himself to literature and journalism. A book on Greece, La Grèce contemporaine (1855), which did not spare Greek susceptibilities, had an immediate success. In Tolla (1855) About was charged with drawing too freely on an earlier Italian novel, Vittoria Savelli (Paris, 1841). This caused a strong prejudice against him, and he was the object of numerous attacks, to which he was ready enough to retaliate. The Lettres d’un bon jeune homme, written to the Figaro under the signature of Valentin de Quévilly, provoked more animosities. During the next few years, with indefatigable energy, and generally with full public recognition, he wrote novels, stories, a play—which failed,—a book-pamphlet on the Roman question, many pamphlets on other subjects of the day, newspaper articles innumerable, some art criticisms, rejoinders to the attacks of his enemies, and popular manuals of political economy, L’A B C du travailleur (1868), Le progrès (1864). About’s attitude towards the empire was that of a candid friend. He believed in its improvability, greeted the liberal ministry of Émile Ollivier at the beginning of 1870 with delight and welcomed the Franco-German War. That day of enthusiasm had a terrible morrow. For his own personal part he lost the loved home near Saverne in Alsace, which he had purchased in 1858 out of the fruits of his earlier literary successes. With the fall of the empire he became a republican, and, always an inveterate anti-clerical, he threw himself with ardour into the battle against the conservative reaction which made head during the first years of the republic. From 1872 onwards for some five or six years his paper, the XIXᵉ Siècle, of which he was the heart and soul, became a power in the land. But the republicans never quite forgave the tardiness of his conversion, and no place rewarded his later zeal. On the 23rd January 1884 he was elected a member of the French Academy, but died on the 16th of January 1885, before taking his seat. His journalism—of which specimens in his earlier and later manners will be found in the two series of Lettres d’un bon jeune homme à sa cousine Madeleine (1861 and 1863), and the posthumous collection, Le dix-neuvième siècle (1892)—was of its nature ephemeral. So were the pamphlets, great and small. His political economy was that of an orthodox popularizer, and in no sense epoch-making. His dramas are negligible. His more serious novels, Madelon (1863), L’infâme (1867), the three that form the trilogy of the Vieille Roche (1866), and Le roman d’un brave homme (1880)—a kind of counterblast to the view of the French workman presented in Zola’s Assommoir—contain striking and amusing scenes, no doubt, but scenes which are often suggestive of the stage, while description, dissertation, explanation too frequently take the place of life. His best work after all is to be found in the books that are almost wholly farcical, Le nez d’un notaire (1862); Le roi des montagnes (1856); L’homme à l’oreille cassée (1862); Trente et quarante (1858); Le cas de M. Guérin (1862). Here his most genuine wit, his sprightliness, his vivacity, the fancy that was in him, have free play. “You will never be more than a little Voltaire,” said one of his masters when he was a lad at school. It was a true prophecy.

ABRABANEL, ISAAC, called also (1437–1508), Jewish statesman, philosopher, theologian and commentator, was born at Lisbon of an ancient family which claimed descent from the royal house of David. Like many of the Spanish Jews he united scholarly tastes with political ability. He held a high place in the favour of, who entrusted him with the management of important state affairs. On the death of Alphonso in 1481, his counsellors and favourites were harshly treated by his successor John, and Abrabanel was compelled to flee to Spain, where he held for eight years (1484–1492) the post of a minister of state under Ferdinand and Isabella. When the Jews were banished from Spain in 1492, no exception was made in Abrabanel’s favour. He afterwards resided at Naples, Corfu and Monopoli, and in 1503 removed to Venice, where he held office as a minister of state till his death in 1508. His repute as a commentator on the Scriptures is still high; in the 17th and 18th centuries he was much read by Christians such as Buxtorf. Abrabanel often quotes Christian authorities, though he opposed Christian exegesis of Messianic passages. He was one of the first to see that for Biblical exegesis it was necessary to reconstruct the social environment of olden times, and he skilfully applied his practical knowledge of statecraft to the elucidation of the books of Samuel and Kings. ABRACADABRA, a word analogous to (q.v.), used as a magical formula by the Gnostics of the sect of Basilides in invoking the aid of beneficent spirits against disease and misfortune. It is found on Abraxas stones which were worn as amulets. Subsequently its use spread beyond the Gnostics, and in modern times it is applied contemptuously (e.g. by the early opponents of the evolution theory) to a conception or hypothesis which purports to be a simple solution of apparently insoluble phenomena. The Gnostic physician Serenus Sammonicus gave precise instructions as to its mystical use in averting or curing agues and fevers generally. The paper on which the word was written had to be folded in the form of a cross, suspended from the neck by a strip of linen so as to rest on the pit of the stomach, worn in this way for nine days, and then, before sunrise, cast behind the wearer into a stream running to the east. The letters were usually arranged as a triangle in one of the following ways:—

ABRAHAM, or (Hebrew for “father is high”), the ancestor of the Israelites, the first of the great Biblical patriarchs. His life as narrated in the book of Genesis reflects the traditions of different ages. It is the latest writer (P) who men-