[Ely] (8), a celebrated cathedral city, in the fen-land of Cambridgeshire, on the Ouse, 30 m. SE. of Peterborough; noted as the scene of Hereward's heroic stand against William the Conqueror in 1071; the cathedral, founded in 1083, is unique as containing specimens of the various Gothic styles incorporated during the course of 400 years.
[Ely, Isle of], a name given to the N. portion of Cambridgeshire on account of its having been at one time insulated by marshes; being included in the region of the Fens, has been drained, and is now fertile land.
[Elyot, Sir Thomas], author and ambassador, born in Wiltshire; ambassador to the court of Charles V.; celebrated as the author of "The Governour," the first English work on moral philosophy, and also of the first Latin-English dictionary (1490-1546).
[Elysium] the abode of the shades of the virtuous dead in the nether world as conceived of by the poets of Greece and Rome, where the inhabitants live a life of passive blessedness, which, however, is to such a man as Achilles a place of woe rather and unrest, where he would fain exchange places with the meanest hind that breathes in the upper world.
[Elze, Frederick Carl], a German Shakespearian scholar, born at Dessau; early devoted himself to the study of English literature; lived some time in England and Scotland; in 1875 became professor of English Literature at Halle; his various publications on Shakespeare and the Elizabethan dramatists are full of excellent criticisms; also wrote Lives of Scott and Byron (1821-1889).
[Elzevir], the name of an eminent family of printers residing in Amsterdam and Leyden, Louis the first of them, who started in Leyden; their publications date from 1594 to 1680.
[Elzevir Editions], editions of the classics printed at Amsterdam and Leyden during the 16th and 17th centuries by a family of the Elzevirs, and considered to be immaculate.
[Emanation, the Doctrine of], a doctrine of Eastern origin, which derives everything that exists from the divine nature by necessary process of emanation, as light from the sun, and ascribes all evil and the degrees of it to a greater and greater distance from the pure ether of this parent source, or to the extent in consequence to which the being gets immersed in and clogged with matter.
[Emancipation], originally a term in Roman law and name given to the process of the manumission of a son by his father; the son was sold to a third party and after the sale became sui juris; it is now applied to the remission of old laws in the interest of freedom, which Carlyle regards in his "Shooting Niagara," as the sum of nearly all modern recent attempts at Reform.
[Emanuel I.], king of Portugal from 1495 to 1521; his reign inaugurated the golden period of Portuguese history, during which Portugal became the first maritime and commercial power in Europe; was the patron of Vasco da Gama and Albuquerque; issued an edict for the expulsion of the Jews from his kingdom, and wrote to the Elector of Saxony begging him to get rid of Luther (1469-1521).