purgative, but is dangerously violent in its by which the distance from England to Karachi action. Euphrasy. See EYEBRIGHT. key of the Nearer Eastern Question, is partly a Euphro'syne (i.e. the joyous one'), one of the Graces (q.v.). was to be 1000 miles shorter than by the Suez route. Another scheme for a railway in 1862 also collapsed. In 1900-5 Sir W. Willcocks planned a Euphrates (Pers. Ufratu, Heb. Phrat, Syr. railway from the Mediterranean by way of DamEphrat, Arab. Furat) is the largest river in Western by the Euphrates Valley to Bagdad. The Bagdad ascus or Homs to Tadmor, thence to Hit, and so Asia, and, with the Tigris, forms the most import-railway, built under German auspices, which in ant river-system of that part of the Continent. It has its source in the heart of Armenia in two branches-the Kara-Su (270 miles) and the Murad (300 miles), of which the former rises a few miles NE. of Erzerum, and the latter over 130 miles to the east, near Lake Van-uniting in about 39° N. lat. and 39° E. long., close to Keban Maadin (2664 feet above the sea). From here the united stream flows in a general southerly direction, and breaks through the Taurus in a succession of rapids and cataracts for about 40 miles, emerging at Sumeysát (the ancient Samosata), and passing Bir, at which point it is 100 miles distant from the nearest shore of the Mediterranean. Flowing south, it separates for a considerable distance Mesopotamia from Syria and the deserts of Syrian Arabia; then curving to the south-east, it flows on to Kurna, where it is joined by the waters of the Tigris; and the joint river, taking the name of the Shat-el-Arab, empties itself by several arms (only one of which is navigable by large vessels) into the Persian Gulf, 60 miles below Basra, after a course of fully 1700 miles. The principal of its few tributaries after leaving the mountains are the Sajur on the right, and the Balik-su and Khabúr on the left bank, besides the Persian river Karún, which enters the estuary at Mohammera. The chief towns now on its banks are Sumeysát, Bir, Ana, Hit, and Hilla, Basra lying really on a creek a short distance from the main stream; the river between Ana and Hit is studded with islands, many of them inhabited. The Euphrates is more or less navigable for light craft as far as Hit, and farther while the river is in flood (April to August). In ancient times, when canals and embankments regulated the river's inundations, these exercised the same beneficial effect over a fertile and populous country as those of the Nile on Egypt; but barely a hundredth of the old system is maintained to-day. Numerous remains of ancient cities are still to be traced near the banks, such as the famous site of Babylon, and the Birs Nimrúd (see BABYLONIA). In 1908 Sir William Willcocks submitted to the Turkish government a scheme for irrigating some 3,000,000 acres in Mesopotamia, at a cost of £7,410,000, with every prospect of a highly remunerative returnto make another Egypt of Mesopotamia. In 1911 the government approved a much less extensive scheme, which would, however, restore fertility to a large area in the Euphrates Valley. It in cluded the damming up of the head of the Euphrates canal, into which the main current of the river had for many years been diverted, with disastrous consequences for agriculture on the banks of the river and for such navigation by small craft and rafts as was formerly practicable. It used to be debated which of the two ancient trade-routes to India-that by Suez, or the other by way of Scanderoon and down the Euphrates Valley-was to be preferred. Captain (afterwards General) F. R. Chesney, having, in 1831, descended the Euphrates, maintair ed that this was the shortest possible route to Bombay, with less open sea than any other, and that the country it would open out was rich in natural products. In 1835-36, with government support, Chesney conducted an expedition thither, which launched two iron steamers at Birejik, and though the channel was difficult, one steamer reached the mouth of the river, the other being lost in a violent storm. In 1856 he laid down a practicable route for a railway Euphuism, a term used in English literature to denote an affected and bombastic style of language, fashionable for a short period at the court of Queen Elizabeth and in the literature of the time. The word was formed from the title of the book which brought the style into vogue, the Euphues of John Lyly (q.v.). Euphuism is usually taken to have been an exaggeration of the prevailing Italian taste; but Dr Landmann (Der Euphuismus, Giessen, 1881) has sought to prove that the peculiarities of Lyly's style are directly to be traced to Antonio de Guevara (1490-1545), Spanish court preacher, historiographer, bishop, and moralist. His chief work was an historical romance, based on the life and the meditations of Marcus Aurelius, one English translation of which by Lord Berners appeared in 1531, another by North (as The Dial of Princes) in 1558-67. Euphuism has even been called Gue varism. In Holofernes in Love's Labour's Lost, and in Sir Piercy Shafton in the Monastery, Euphuism is caricatured. See Underhill's Spanish Literature in the England of the Tudors (1900), but especially Feuillerat's John Lyly (1910). Eu'poda, a section of vegetarian beetles in the Tetramerous division. The gorgeous Kangaroobeetles of tropical Asia and Africa, the Donacea on water-plants, Crioceris on lilies, asparagus, &c. are examples. Comparatively few are British. Eurasians is a convenient term for the offspring of Europeans and Asiatics, and is chiefly used in India of the children by European fathers of Hindu mothers and their descendants. They prefer to be called Anglo-Indians. The term Eurasian is also used in geography for facts true of Europe and Asia (Eurasia) taken as one continent, for the races common to both continents, or specifically for the primitive Aryan peoples. Eure, a department of Normandy, immediately south of the department of Seine Inférieure, contains an area of 2290 sq. m. Pop. (1881) 364,291; (1921) 303,159; the decrease has gone on steadily since 1846 (423,247), small families, often limited to one child, prevailing among all classes. The surface is generally level; the highest point reaches only 790 feet. The principal river is the Seine. The Eure, from which this department derives its name, and the Rille, both affluents of the Seine, are the only other important rivers; the Eure, which rises in the department of Orne, has a course of 141 miles, and is navigable for 54 miles. The climate is mild, moist, and foggy. Along the Seine the soil is in some parts sandy, stony, and barren, but the greater part is very fertile. The chief natural products are corn, hemp, flax, vegetables, and fruit, particularly apples and pears, from which large quantities of cider and perry are made. The breeding of cattle, horses, and sheep is favoured by extensive meadows and pasture lands. Iron is found in considerable quantities. There are extensive iron and copper works and pin-manufactories. Cotton goods, cloth, linen, paper, and beet-sugar also are manufactured. The department is divided into five arrondissements-Évreux, Louviers, Les Andelys, Bernay, and Pont-Audemer. The capital is Évreux. sq. m. Eure-et-Loir, a department of France, to the south of the preceding, with an area of 2260 Pop. (1872) 282,622; (1921) 251,255. It is watered mainly by the Eure in the north, and the Loir in the south. It is in general level, the east and south being occupied by high and extensive flats; while in the west the scenery is finely varied by wooded hills and valleys. The soil is fertile, and good crops of wheat and oats are raised, besides considerable quantities of vegetables and fruit; cider is prepared, and some wine. Stock-raising also is of importance, and iron and a few other minerals are worked. The rivers, though not navigable, furnish valuable water-power for the numerous mills on their banks; besides foundries, there are manufactories of beet-root sugar, cotton, wool, silk, paper, boots, and hats. The department is divided into the four arrondissements of Chartres, Châteaudun, Dreux, and Nogent-le-Rotrou, with the town of Chartres for capital. Eureka, (1) a port and capital of Humboldt county, California, on Humboldt Bay, chiefly noteworthy for its mild, equable climate. It has several lumber-mills, and exports great quantities of red wood lumber from the giant forests around. Pop. 13,000. - -(2) A mining-town, capital of Eureka county, Nevada, 90 miles by rail S. of the Palisades station on the Central Pacific Railroad. Here are gold, silver, and lead mines. Pop. 700. Euripides, the latest of the three great Greek tragedians, was born at the time when the Persian attack upon the freedom of Greece was being repelled in a series of glorious victories; and this fact is expressed in the story that he was born 480 B.C. at Salamis, whither the Athenians had fled, and where the Persian fleet was defeated in that year. The first half of his life coincided with the growth of the Athenian empire, the second with its decline. Eschylus, the first of the three tragedians, a man of forty when Euripides was born, probably had died before Euripides produced his first play-at which time Sophocles had already been thirteen years before the public, and Aristophanes, the comedian, who was to be the constant opponent of Euripides, was not yet born. Euripides was the son of wealthy parents, who probably had made their fortune by trade, for Aristophanes (Ach. 478, Ran. 840) banters him on the subject with jests which would have been pointless had they not contained some truth. Tradition says that his father intended him to compete in the national athletic festivals of Greece; and this may account for Euripides' pronounced dislike of athletes (Frag. 284). He then took to painting, but, like Théophile Gautier, abandoned it for literature; and he has indeed the painter's eye for an effective situation. Tradition represents him as the friend of Socrates, and the pupil of Prodicus, Protagoras, and Anaxagoras; and he does more than once reproduce in his plays Anaxagoras' doctrine of the origin of all things from the wedlock of Earth and Air (cf. Frag. 836, 890, 935; Ar. Ran. 892). He is said to have been married twice, and to have had three sons. Scandal has been busy with his wives, but there can be no truth in it, otherwise we should have heard of it from Aristophanes; and his reputation as a woman-hater is not confirmed by an impartial study of his plays. How many dramas he wrote we do not know, but the names and some fragments of about eighty are known to us, and of these eighty we possess eighteen complete. He won the tragic prize only five times, and he died 406 B.C. at the court of Archelaus, king of Macedonia. His habits were those of the scholar and the recluse. He was one of the first and the few private persons in Greece to possess a library (cf. Hipp. 452, 954; Iph. A. 798; Alc. 962; Frag. 629; Ar. Ran. 943, 1403). He took no such part in public life as did Eschylus and even Sophocles. In politics he was a moderate, approving of democracy Frag. 628), but not of demagogues (Hec. 132, 254). His views of life on the whole were pessimistic: he did not share Aristophanes' romantic illusions as to the past, and the contemplation of the future could bring no comfort in an age when the doctrine of progress had not as yet been formulated. The immoralities of the accepted mythology shocked him as well as other thinkers; but his philosophy sufficed neither to shake off the old religion nor to reconcile him to it. The names and probable order of the surviving plays are: Alcestis, Medea, HippoTroades, Helena, Phænissæ, Orestes; the Baccha lytus, Hecuba, Andromache, Supplices, Heraclide, and Iphigenia in Aulis were put on the Athenian stage only after the author's death; and it is uncertain to what period belonged the Ion, Hercules Furens, Iphigenia in Tauris, Electra, and Cyclops, whilst it is doubtful whether the Rhesus is genuine. Whereas the characters in the plays of schylus and Sophocles had been heroic in their proportions and greater than life, Euripides set to work to be human. And in this we have the secret both of his success and of his failure of his failure, because he made the mistake of imagining human life to be the same thing as everyday life; of his success, because in his treatment of everyday motives and emotions he was, 'with his droppings of warm tears,' the most tragic of the poets. His skill as a playwright is of the highest order; he can construct plots which are exciting beyond anything attempted by his predecessors, and he has an unerring instinct for a situation.' But he has all the unscrupulousness of the practical playwright: in his consuming desire to get on to the situation as rapidly as possible, and to bring the curtain down sharp on it, he substitutes a bald prologue for a proper exposition, and, instead of working out the dénouement, makes : a Deus ex machinâ cut the knot of the situation. For the sake of the same all-important consideration he will sacrifice consistency in character-drawing, and transgress all the bounds of artistic selfrestraint. His popularity increased, indeed we might almost say began, after his death; his plays were 'revived' on the stage more frequently than those of Eschylus or Sophocles; they fill a much larger place in the mind of Aristotle, as appears from his Poetics, than those of the other two tragedians; and the number of his plays that have survived is greater than both theirs put together. And Euripides was a favourite with Theocritus, Virgil, Ovid, Horace, Milton, and Browning. Notable critics of the text were Porson (1797), Elmsley (1813), G. Hermann (1838), Badham (1851), Weil (1890). There are complete texts by Dindorf (1870), Kirchhoff, Paley, Nauck, and Murray. Murray's poetic translations of many of the plays have been acted. A. S. Way's verse- translation of the whole (3 vols. 1894-98) are also admirable. Verrall, in Euripides the Rationalist (1895), asserts that Euripides wrote his plays deliberately (though not explicitly) to make the gods ridiculous and undermine popular faith in miracles. See also Norwood, Riddle of the Bacchae (1908), Verrall, The Bacchants (1911), Murray, Euripides and his Age (1913). |