Reference Books

SECTION I - HISTORY, BIOGRAPHY, and TRAVELS Baker (Sir Samuel W.). THE NILE TRIBUTARIES OF ABYSSINIA, and the Sword-Hunters of the Hamran Arabs. By Sir Samuel W. Baker, M.A., F.R.C.S. With Portraits, Maps, and Illustrations. Third Edition, 8vo. 21s. Sir Samuel Baker here describes twelve months' exploration, during which he examined the rivers that are tributary to the Nile from Abyssinia,... more...

CARNEGIE, ANDREW (1837-  ), American “captain of industry” and benefactor, was born in humble circumstances in Dunfermline, Scotland, on the 25th of November 1837. In 1848 his father, who had been a Chartist, emigrated to America, settling in Allegheny City, Pennsylvania. The raw Scots lad started work at an early age as a bobbin-boy in a cotton factory, and a few years later was engaged as a... more...

(Lat. _conventio_, an assembly or agreement, from _convenire_, to come together), a meeting or assembly; an agreement between parties; a general agreement on which is based some custom, institution, rule of behaviour or taste, or canon of art; hence extended to the abuse of such an agreement, whereby the rules based upon it become lifeless and artificial. The word is of some interest historically and... more...

CONDUCTION, ELECTRIC. The electric conductivity of a substance is that property in virtue of which all its parts come spontaneously to the same electric potential if the substance is kept free from the operation of electric force. Accordingly, the reciprocal quality, electric resistivity, may be defined as a quality of a substance in virtue of which a difference of potential can exist between different... more...

I. INTRODUCTORY GROUP. "PAULINE," "PARACELSUS," "SORDELLO." These three poems are Mr. Browning's first, and they are also, as I have said, the one partial exception to the unity and continuousness of his work; they have, at least, one common characteristic which detaches them from the remainder of it. Each is in its different way the study of a human spirit, too ambitious... more...

BEDLAM, or Bethlehem Hospital, the first English lunatic asylum, originally founded by Simon FitzMary, sheriff of London, in 1247, as a priory for the sisters and brethren of the order of the Star of Bethlehem. It had as one of its special objects the housing and entertainment of the bishop and canons of St Mary of Bethlehem, the mother-church, on their visits to England. Its first site was in... more...

PREFACE. his is an honest and earnest little book, if it has no other merit; and has been prepared expressly for the use of the young people of our great Republic, whom it is designed to aid in becoming, what we are convinced they all desire to be, true American ladies and gentlemen. Desiring to make our readers something better than mere imitators of foreign manners, often based on social conditions... more...

PREFACE. Cynics may ask, how many have profited by the innumerable proverbs and maxims of prudence which have been current in the world time out of mind? They will say that their only use is to repeat them after some unhappy wight has “gone wrong.” When, for instance, a man has played “ducks and drakes” with his money, the fact at once calls up the proverb which declares that “wilful waste... more...

AUSTRIA, LOWER (Ger. Niederösterreich or Österreich unter der Enns, "Austria below the river Enns"), an archduchy and crownland of Austria, bounded E. by Hungary, N. by Bohemia and Moravia, W. by Bohemia and Upper Austria, and S. by Styria. It has an area of 7654 sq. m. and is divided into two parts by the Danube, which enters at its most westerly point, and leaves it at its eastern... more...

CHAPTER I. ORIGIN OF COATS OF ARMS. Heraldry is the science which teaches how to blazon or describe in proper terms armorial bearings and their accessories. Many volumes have been written on the origin of Heraldry and even on the antiquity of separate charges contained in an escutcheon: it would be filling the pages of an elementary work on Heraldry to little purpose to enter upon an inquiry as to the... more...