Assiniboine, a river of Canada, which flows through Manitoba and joins the Red River at Winnipeg, about 40 miles above the entrance of the latter into Lake Winnipeg, after a somewhat circuitous course of about 500 miles from the west and north-west. Steamers ply on it for over 300 miles.
Assiout. See Siout.
Assisi (a˙s-sē'sē), a small town in Italy, in the province of Umbria, 20 miles north of Spoleto, the see of a bishop, and famous as the birthplace of St. Francis d'Assisi. The splendid church built over the chapel where the saint received his first impulse to devotion is one of the finest remains of mediæval Gothic architecture.
Assi´zes, a term chiefly used in England to signify the sessions of the courts held at Westminster prior to Magna Charta, but thereafter appointed by successive enactments to be held annually in every county. Twelve judges, who are members of the highest courts in England, twice in every year perform a circuit into all the counties into which the kingdom is divided (the
counties being grouped into seven circuits), to hold these assizes, at which both civil and criminal cases are decided. Occasionally this circuit is performed a third time for the purpose of jail-delivery. In London and Middlesex, instead of circuits, courts of nisi prius are held. At the assizes all the justices of the peace of the county are bound to attend. Special commissions of assize are granted for inquest into certain causes. In Scotland the term assize is still applicable to the jury in criminal cases.
Among the more important historic uses of the term assize are its application to any sitting or deliberative council, and its transference thence to their ordinances, decrees, or assessments. In the latter sense we have the Assizes of Jerusalem, a code of feudal laws formulated in 1099 under Godfrey of Bouillon; the Assizes of Clarendon (1166), of Northampton (1176), and of Woodstock (1184); also the assisæ venalium (1203), for regulating the prices of articles of common consumption; the Assize of Arms (1181), an ordinance for organizing the national militia, &c.
Assmanshausen. See Asmannshausen.
Associated Counties, a term applied to Essex, Cambridge, Norfolk, Suffolk, and Hertford, with, subsequently, Huntingdon and Lincoln. The association was formed in 1642 to raise an army for the Parliament and keep the war out of their own districts. The successive leaders were Lord Grey of Wark, the Earl of Manchester, and Cromwell.
Association of Ideas, a doctrine of both psychological and philosophical import. In psychology the term is used to comprise the conditions under which one idea is able to recall another to consciousness. It is, therefore, the doctrine which deals with the reproduction of past experience by a present object of consciousness. The phrase 'association of ideas' was first introduced by Locke, and dealt with by Berkeley and Hartley, who became the founder of the so-called Associationist School.
Ass´onance, in poetry, a term used when the terminating words of lines have the same vowel sound but make no proper rhyme. Such verses, having what we should consider false rhymes, are regularly employed in Spanish poetry; but cases are not wanting in leading British poets. Mrs. Browning not only used them frequently, but justified the use of them.