Page:The American Cyclopædia (1879) Volume VI.djvu/534

 526 ELGINSHIRE ELIE DE BEAUMONT statue of Bacchus from the choragic monument of Thrasyllus, one of the caryatides from the temple of Pandrosus, a portion of the frieze from the Erechtheum, and fragments of the columns of the Parthenon and Erechtheum; numerous inscriptions, including that com- memorating the Athenians who fell at Poti- da3a; and urns, &c., taken from various parts of Athens and its neighborhood. The sculptures executed by Phidias, as has been generally supposed, or under his direction, exhibit the highest development of Greek art. As types of beauty they have never been surpassed, and even in their present fragmentary condition they afford models of form which modern art has not been able to equal. Under their influ- ence a national school of sculpture has been established in England. A paper in "Black- wood's Magazine" for December, 1873, by W. W. Story, controverts the opinion that Phidias was the sculptor of the Parthenon marbles. ELGINSHIRE (formerly MORAYSHIRE), a N. E. county of Scotland, bounded N. by Moray frith ; area, 628 sq. m. ; pop. in 1871, 43,598. It is divided into two parts by a detached portion of Inverness-shire, the smaller on the south. It has a coast line of about 30 m., on which are a few small harbors. With the exception of some broken masses of rock, the surface in this quarter is nearly level, but inland it rises into hills, interspersed with fertile valleys, and diversified by lakes. The Spey, Lossie, and Findhorn, the first and last of which con- tain salmon, are the chief rivers. Slate and free- stone are the only valuable minerals. The cli- mate is mild and dry ; the soil of the lowlands is generally fertile, and the hills furnish pas- turage for black-faced sheep, cattle, and horses. The staple production is wheat, but oats, pota- toes, and turnips are also grown extensively. Less than a quarter of the land is cultivated, and there are large unenclosed tracts. Corn, whiskey, fish, and timber are the most impor- tant exports. The county is traversed by a number of good roads, but has no canals" or railways. Chief towns, Elgin, Torres, Focha- bers, and Burgh ead. ELI, judge of the Hebrews immediately be- fore Samuel. He was of the race of Aaron, and officiated as high priest and judge during 40 years; yet he lacked the power to discipline his own family, and a train of woes befell him and his house during the latter years of his life. His piety was exemplary, but his ineffi- ciency was a source of many calamities. After a disastrous battle with the Philistines (about 1110 B. C.), in which his two sons were slain and the ark of the Lord was captured, Eli, on hearing the last news, fell back from his chair and broke his neck, at the age of 98. ELIAS. 'See ELIJAH. ELIiS LEV1TA (Heb. ffallevi, the Levite), a Hebrew scholar, born according to some in Franconia, according to others in Italy, about 1470, died in Venice in 1549. At the begin- ning of the IGth century he lectured in Padua on Hebrew grammar, and wrote a commentary on one of Moses Kimhi's grammatical works (Pesaro, 1508; frequently reprinted). "When Padua was plundered in 1509 he lost all his property, and afterward visited Venice and Rome. Here he became the teacher in He- brew of Cardinal Egidio. He was again re- duced to poverty by the sack of Rome in 1527, and returned to Venice. In 1540, with Paul Fagius, he established a Hebrew printing offico at Isny, Swabia; and in 1547 he again estab- lished himself in Venice. He rejected many of the Hebrew traditions, and spoke so favor- ably of the Christians that he was suspected of infidelity to Judaism. But his high personal character and his profound scholarship were never questioned. Besides numerous lexico- graphical and grammatical treatises, of which his TishU (Isny, 1541 ; Basel, 1557) and Ba^Jiur (Rome, 1518 ; Basel, 1825) are the most cele- brated respectively, he wrote poems, translated the Psalms into German, and was said to be the author of the Jewish-German novel Bdba. But his great work was MasoretJi TiammasoretTi (Venice, 1538), a critical commentary on the Biblical text and its authors. The best trans- lation is the English, published, with a critical edition of the original, by Dr. Ginsburg (Lon- don, 1867). ELIE DE BEAUMONT, Jean Baptiste Armand Lonis Leonce, a French geologist, born at Canon, Calvados, Sept. 25, 1798. In 1821 he under- took, by order of the government, a series of metallurgical explorations, and was made on his return in 1824 a mining engineer. In 1829 he became professor at the school of mines, in 1832 at the college de France, and in 1833 en- gineer-in-chief. After the death of Francois Arago he was made perpetual secretary of the academy of sciences. Napoleon III. appointed him senator. He was appointed in 1823, to- gether with Dufrenoy, to aid M. Brochant de Villiers in preparing the materials for the geo- logical map of France ; and in this commission they were charged to visit England, where a similar work was in progress, and at the same time to examine the metallurgical operations there practised. The results of their investi- gations were published by Dufre'noy and FJie de Beaumont in a work entitled Voyage metal- lurgique en Angleterre (1827), illustrated with numerous plates, and afterward enlarged with the aid of L6on Coste and Perdonnet. FJie de Beaumont afterward devoted himself almost exclusively to geological researches, while en- gaged upon the preparation of the map of France, and published frequent papers in the Annales des mines and other scientific journals. In his Notice sur les systemes des tnontagnes (1852), he endeavored to prove that mountain chains are to be classed according to the direc- tion of their range, all those lying parallel with the same great circle of the earth, wherever they may be found, having been uplifted sud- denly during the same geological epoch. He described in the last edition of his work the