[Austin Friars]. See [Augustinians].
[Australasia] (i. e. Southern Asia), a name given to Australia, New Zealand, and the islands adjoining.
[Australia], a continent entirely within the Southern Hemisphere, about one-fourth smaller than Europe, its utmost length from E. to W. being 2400 m., and breadth 1971; the coast has singularly few inlets, though many and spacious harbours, only one great gulf, Carpentaria, on the N., and one bight, the Great Australian Bight, on the S.; the interior consists of a low desert plateau, depressed in the centre, bordered with ranges of various elevation, between which and the sea is a varying breadth of coast-land; the chief mountain range is in the E., and extends more or less parallel all the way with the E. coast; the rivers are few, and either in flood or dried up, for the climate is very parching, only one river, the Murray, 2345 m. long, of any consequence, while the lakes, which are numerous, are shallow and nearly all salt; the flora is peculiar, the eucalyptus and the acacia the most characteristic, grains, fruits, and edible roots being all imported; the fauna is no less peculiar, including, in the absence of many animals of other countries, the kangaroo, the dingo, and the duck-bill, the useful animals being likewise all imported; of birds, the cassowary and the emu, and smaller ones of great beauty, but songless; minerals abound, both the precious and the useful; the natives are disappearing, the colonists in 1904 numbering close upon 4,000,000; and the territory divided into Victoria, New South Wales, Queensland, S. Australia, and W. Australia, which with Tasmania federated in 1900 and became the Commonwealth.
[Austrasia], or the East Kingdom, a kingdom on the E. of the possessions of the Franks in Gaul, that existed from 511 to 843, capital of which was Metz; it was celebrated for its rivalry with the kingdom of Neustria, or the Western Kingdom.
[Austria], or Austro-Hungary, is a country of every variety of surface and scenery; is inhabited by peoples of different races and nationalities, speaking different languages, as many as 20, and composed of 50 different states, 5 of them kingdoms; occupies the centre of Europe, yet has free communication with the seas on all sides of it; is the third country for size in it; is divided by the Leitha, a tributary of the Danube, into Cis-Leithan on the W. and Trans-Leithan on the E.; has next to no coast-line; its chief seaport, Trieste; is watered by rivers, the Danube in chief, all of which have their mouths in other countries; has three zones of climate with corresponding zones of vegetation; is rich in minerals; is largely pastoral and agricultural, manufacturing chiefly in the W.; the capital Vienna, and the population over 40,000,000.
[Austrian lip], a thick under-lip characteristic of the House of Hapsburg.
[Auteuil], a village in the dep. of the Seine, now included in Paris.
[Authorised Version of the Bible] was executed between the years 1604 and 1610 at the instance of James I., so that it is not undeservedly called King James's Bible, and was the work of 47 men selected with marked fairness and discretion, divided into three groups of two sections each, who held their sittings for three years severally at Westminster, Cambridge, and Oxford, the whole being thereafter revised by a committee of six, who met for nine months in Stationers' Hall, London, and received thirty pounds each, the rest being done for nothing. The result was a translation that at length superseded every other, and that has since woven itself into the affectionate regard of the whole English-speaking people. The men who executed it evidently felt something of the inspiration that breathes in the original, and they have produced a version that will remain to all time a monument of the simplicity, dignity, grace, and melody of the English language; its very style has had a nobly educative effect on the national literature, and has contributed more than anything else to prevent it from degenerating into the merely frivolous and formal.
[Autochthons], Greek for aborigines.
[Auto-da-fé], or Act of Faith, a ceremony held by the court of the Inquisition in Spain, preliminary to the execution of a heretic, in which the condemned, dressed in a hideously fantastic robe, called the San Benito, and a pointed cap, walked in a procession of monks, followed by carts containing coffins with malefactors' bones, to hear a sermon on the true faith, prior to being burned alive; the most famous auto-da-fé took place in Madrid in 1680.