Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 8.djvu/166

156 already cost more than £60,000. The church of the Holy Trinity, which is attached to the cathedral, was commenced in the reign of Edward II, and is one of the most perfect buildings of that age. St Mary’s church is also a hand- some structure, partly in the Norman and partly in the Early English style of architecture. The population of the two parishes of Ely, including an extensive rural district, in 1871 was 8166.  ELYSIUM, a name given by the Greeks to the abode of the righteous dead, who, in the words of Pindar, inherit there a tearless eternity (0l., ii. 120). In the Odyssey, iv. 563, this region, which answers to the Hindu Sutala, is spoken of as a plain at the end of the earth, where the fair-haired Rhadamanthys lives, and where the people are vexed by neither snow nor storm, heat nor cold, the air being always tempered by the zephyr wafted to them from the ocean. In the Hesiodic Works and Days, 166, the same description is given of the islands of the blessed, which yield three harvests yearly. These are near the Deep-eddying Ocean, but the sovereign who rules them is not Rhadamanthys, but Cronus. In Pi ndar, Rhadamanthys (whose name has by some been identiﬁed with the Egyptian Rhotamenti, or king of the under-world) sits by the side of his father Cronus and administers sound judgment. In later accounts this idea is developed into the tribunal of Mines, Rhadamanthys, and Abacus, before which all must appear in order to receive for their righteous or their evil lives the sentence which secures to them an entrance into Paradise or condemns them to be thrust down into Tartarus. Elsewhere [Eacus is the gate-keeper of the under-world, near whom the hell—hound Kerberos (Cerberus) keeps watch. The images under which these abodcs of the blessed are described point clearly to the phenomena of sunset, and reappear in the pictures drawn of the palace of Alkinoos (Alciuoiis). They reﬂect the spotless purity of a heaven lit up by the sun, which tinges with gold the cloud islands as they float on the deep blue sky. Here are the asphodel meadows, which none but the pure in heart, the truthful, and the generous can be suffered to tread; and thus an idea which at the outset had been purely physical, suggested the thoughts of trial, atonement, and puriﬁcation.

1em  ELYOT,, one of the most learned Englishmen of the time of HenryVIII., was the son of a certain Sir Richard Elyot, usually said to be of Suffolk, but, according to a suggestion by C.H. Cooper in Notes and Queries, 1853, more probably of Wiltshire. If an identiﬁcation proposed by Wood be correct, Sir Thomas studied at StMary’s Hall, Oxford, and obtained the degree of bachelor of arts in and that of bachelor of civil law in ; but according to Parker and others he belonged to Jesus College, Cambridge, and his name begins to appear in the list of justices of assize for the Western Circuit about. Be this as it may, he evidently received a university education, and, as he himself declares, soon became “desirous of reading many books, especially concerning humanity and moral philosophy.” He continued to hold the office of clerk to the Western Assize till Wolsey persuaded him to exchange it for that of clerk of the king’s council. The patent conﬁrming the appointment is undated, but belongs to the year. It grants him 40 marks a year and the usual summer and winter livery as enjoyed by Rob. Rydon, John Baldiswell, &c., and other proﬁts as enjoyed by Ric. Eden or Rob. Ridon, on a conditional surrender of patent 21st Oct. 4 HenryVIII., granting the office to the said Rich. Eden. (Brewer, Letters Foreign and Domestic of the Reign of HenryVIII., vol.iv.) According to Elyot’s own account in a mournful letter addressed to Wolsey’s great successor, he performed the duties of the clerkship for “six and a half,” but never received any of the emoluments, and never obtained a full recognition of his status (Henry Ellis, Letters, ii.). On his father’s death he became involved in a lawsuit with his cousin Sir Wm. Tynderne about some property in Cambridgeshire; and though he ultimately gained his case, it proved a severe drain on his small estate. In he was sent on embassies to the papal and imperial courts, and while in Germany unfortunately received instructions to procure the arrest of Tyndale the Reformer. In this part of his mission he totally failed; and his efforts have since procured him the abuse of many a Protestant writer. His intimacy with Sir Thomas More appears to have awakened the suspicions of the king or his minister, for we ﬁnd him writing to Cromwell that his friendship for the ill-fated scholar went no further than usque ad aras. He begs for a share in the conﬁscated property of the monasteries, and offers to give Cromwell the ﬁrst year’s revenue. Unless his letters are to be distrusted, he was for the greater part of his life in very poor circumstances, and, in spite of the rolling rhetoric with which in his prefaces he celebrates the magnanimity of his patrons, received little from them but promises and praise. He died in, and was buried at Carleton, in Cambridgeshire. Among his contemporaries and his immediate successors Elyot enjoyed a high reputation as a scholar; and his future fame was secured by his Latin dictionary and his book called the Governor. The latter treats of the way in which a child ought to be trained who is afterwards expected to become a governor of men, and in so doing discusses such subjects as friendship, punishment, dancing, &c. The former, remarkable as the ﬁrst English book of its kind, contains not only purely lexicographical matter, but little paragraphs on geographical, mythological, and historical proper names, and descriptions of natural objects, diseases, and the like. As a writer Sir Thomas was eminently didactic; his works have all a direct practical purpose, and he is not slow to assert the beneﬁt that must accrue to the reader’s character from their perusal.

1em 1em   ELZEVIR, the name of a celebrated family of Dutch printers belonging to the. The original name was Elsevier, or Elzevier, and their French editions mostly retain this name; but in their Latin editions, which are the more numerous, the name is spelt Elzeverius, which was gradually corrupted into Elzevir. The family origin- ally came from Louvaine, and there Louis, who ﬁrst made the name Elzevir famous, was born in. He learned the business of a bookbinder, and having been compelled in, on account of his political opinions, to leave his