Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 8.djvu/188

Rh 178 E M M E M P ti&amp;gt; Amsterdam, 5 miles N.E. of Cleves. It has a consider able shipping trade, and manufactories of tobacco, chocolate, leather, liqueurs, ink, and perfumery. Its old minster church, built in the middle of the llth century, contains some fine specimens of choir stalls. Emmerich was an important place at an early period, and seems .in the middle of the 15th century to have contained 40,000 inhabitants. In 1794 it was bombarded by the French, and in 1806 it took the oath of allegiance to Murat. It passed into the possession of Prussia in 1815. The popu lation in 1875 was 8117. EMMET, ROBERT (1778-1803), brother of the subject of the next article, was born in Dublin in 1778. He was a school-fellow of the poet Thomas Moore, and his senior by a year at Trinity College, Dublin. Both were members of the Historical Society, and the great champions of the popular side. In 1798 Emmet was expelled from the uni versity, on the ground of being connected with-the association of United Irishmen. He shortly afterwards went to the Continent, and remained there till 1802, when he returned secretly to Dublin, and endeavoured to plan a general Irish revolution. On 23d July 1803, deeming that the time had come to execute his scheme, he made an attempt to seize the arsenal and castle of Dublin ; but the mob which he headed scarcely achieved so much as a serious riot, for they dispersed at the first military volley. Emmet fled to the Wicklow mountains, and perceiving that success was now impossible, resolved to escape to the Continent ; but, contrary to the advice of his friends, he determined to have a last interview with the lady to whom he was attached, a daughter of Curran, the celebrated barrister. The delay proved fatal to him. He was apprehended, and committed for trial on the charge of high treason. He defended himself in a speech of remarkable eloquence, but was condemned to death, and on September 20, 1803, was executed in St Thomas Street, Dublin. Moore, in one of the most pathetic of his Irish melodies, &quot; O breathe not his name,&quot; commemorates Emmet s fate ; and that of Miss Curran, who died in Sicily soon after him, is the subject of another, &quot; She is far from the land where her young hero sleeps.&quot; Although it must be allowed that the con duct of Emmet in his revolutionary attempt was rash and mistaken, the high purity and unselfishness of his inten tions have never been questioned. A life of Emmet was written by the Countess of Haussonville, and was translated into English by John P. Leonard. See also Life of Curran, London, 1819; Curran and his Contemporaries, by C. Phillips, 1818 ; Life of Robert Emmet, by R. Madden, 1847; and Robert Emmet, Cause of his Rebellion, London, 1871. EMMET, THOMAS ADDIS (1764-1827), a lawyer and politician, was born in Cork the 2-ith April 1764. He was the second son of Dr Robert Emmet, who latterly was state- physician in Dublin. After attending the school of Mr Kerr in Cork, Thomas in 1778 entered Trinity College, Dublin. In 1783 he went to study medicine at the university of Edinburgh, where he continued four years. He then visited the chief medical schools of the Continent, and after travelling through Germany, France, and Italy, returned in 1788 to Ireland. Owing, he himself says, to the advice of Sir James Mackintosh, he now resolved to forsake medicine for law ; and with the view of preparing himself for the Irish bar, he studied two years at the Temple, London. He was admitted a member of the Dublin bar in 1790. In the earlier years of his practice he was often engaged as counsel for those of the United Irishmen who were accused of political offences ; but after he became more closely connected with the association, it was deemed prudent that, while privately acting as their legal adviser in all matters, he should no longer be engaged in the public defence of any of their number. In 1797 he became one of the directory of the association, and on the arrest of O Connor about the middle of the same year, he succeeded him as chief leader. On the 12th March 1798 he and other leaders were arrested, and after being examined at the castle were committed to Newgate. He was examined before a secret committee of the House of Lords, and afterwards before a secret committee of the House of Commons; and on the 9th April 1799 he was conveyed as a prisoner to Fort-George, Scotland, where he remained till June 1802. He then received his liberty, but only on condition that he spent the remainder of his life on a foreign soil, his return to British territory being forbidden by severe penalties. After being conveyed to Cuxhaven, he proceeded to Hamburg, and finally to Brussels, where he passed the winter. In the beginning of 1803 he went to France, and had an interview with Napoleon ; but having little faith in Napoleon s designs of invading England, he in the end of the year embarked for America, Here he rose to considerable eminence at the New York bar, and in 1812 held for a short time the office of attorney-general of the State of New York. He died suddenly, 14th November 1827, while conducting a case in the United States circuit court. See Biography, by C. S. Haynes, London, 1829 ; and memoir in Madden s Lives of United Irishmen, 2d vol. 2d ser., London, 1843. EMMIUS, UBBO (1547-1626), a celebrated Dutch historian and geographer, was born at Gretha in East Friesland. He was chosen rector of the college of Norden in 1579, but was ejected in 15S7 for refusing to subscribe the confession of Augsburg. He was subsequently rector of the colleges of Leer and Groningen, and when in 1614 the college in the latter city obtained a university charter, he was chosen as its principal and its professor of history and Greek, and by his wise guidance and his learning raised it speedily to a position of great eminence. He had correspondence with the principal learned men of his time, who all held him in high esteem. He died 9th December 1626. His principal works are Opus Chronologicum, Gronin., 1619, fol. ; Vetus Grcecia illuslrata, Leyd., 1626, 8vo; Rerum Frisicarum Historia, Leyd., 1616, fol.; Hisioria Temporis Nostri, Gronin., 1732, 4to. EMPEDOCLES, one of the most imposing and enigmatic figures in early Greek philosophy, was a native of Agrigentum in Sicily, and lived in the 5th century, probably from 490 to 430 B.C. The details of his life are full of fable and contradictions. The most probable accounts represent him as belonging to an honourable family in the palmy days of his city, as a champion of free institutions, like his father Melon, detecting the aims of incipient tyrants, and crushing the opponents of popular rights, but as finally forced, through the change of parties that occurred during his visit to Olympia, to forego his native city, and to return to Peloponnesus to die. Of his poem on nature (&amp;lt;/R O-IS) there are left about 400 lines in unequal fragments out of the original 5000; of the hymns of purification (xaQapn-oi] less than 100 verses remain ; of the other works, improbably assigned to him, nothing is known. His grand but obscure hexameters, after the example of Parmenides, delighted Lucretius. Aristotle, it is said, called him the father of rhetoric. But it was as at once statesman, prophet, physicist, physician, and reformer that he most impressed the popular imagination. To his contemporaries, as to himself, he seemed more than a mere man. The Sicilians honoured his august aspect as he moved amongst them with purple robes and golden girdle, with long hair bound by a Delphic garland, and brazen sandals on his feet, and with a retinue of slaves behind him. Stories were told of the ingenuity and generosity by which he had made the marshes round Selinus salubrious, of the grotesque device by which he laid the winds that ruined the harvests of