Part 46 (1/2)

AUVERGNE', an ancient province of France, united to the crown under Louis XIII. in 1610, embracing the deps. of Puy-de-Dome, Cantal, and part of Haute-Loire, the highlands of which separate the basin of the Loire from that of the Garonne, and contain a hardy and industrious race of people descended from the original inhabitants of Gaul; they speak a strange dialect, and supply all the water-carriers and street-sweepers of Paris.

AUXERRE' (15), an ancient city, capital of the dep. of Yonne, 90 m.

SE. of Paris; has a fine cathedral in the Flamboyant style; drives a large trade in wine.

AVA, capital of the Burmese empire from 1364 to 1740 and from 1822 to 1835; now in ruins from an earthquake in 1839.

AV'ALON, in the Celtic mythology an island of faerie in the region where the sun sinks to rest at eventide, and the final home of the heroes of chivalry when their day's work was ended on earth.

AVARS, a tribe of Huns who, driven from their home in the Altai Mts.

by the Chinese, invaded the E. of Europe about 553, and committed ravages in it for about three centuries, till they were subdued by Charlemagne, and all but exterminated in 827.

AVATAR', or Descent, the incarnation and incarnated manifestation of a Hindu deity, a theory both characteristic of Vishnuism and marking a new epoch in the religious development of India.

AVE MARIA, an invocation to the Virgin, so called as forming the first two words of the salutation of the angel in Luke i. 28.

AVEBURY, or ABERY, a village in Wilts.h.i.+re, 6 m. W. of Marlborough, in the middle of a so-called Druidical structure consisting of 100 monoliths, surmised to have been erected and arranged in memory of some great victory.

AVELLI'NO (26), chief town in a province of the name in Campania, 59 m. E. of Naples, famous for its trade in hazel-nuts and chestnuts; manufactures woollens, paper, macaroni, &c.; has been subject to earthquakes.

AVENTINE HILL, one of the seven hills of Rome, the mount to which the plebs sullenly retired on their refusal to submit to the patrician oligarchy, and from which they were enticed back by Menenius Agrippa by the well-known fable of the members of the body and the stomach.

AVENTI'NUS, a Bavarian historian, author of the ”Chronicon Bavariae”

(Annals of Bavaria), a valuable record of the early history of Germany (1477-1534).

AVENZO'AR, an Arabian physician, the teacher of Averroes (1073-1103).

AVERNUS, a deep lake in Italy, near Naples, 1 m. in circ.u.mference, occupying the crater of an extinct volcano, at one time surrounded by a dark wood, and conceived, from its gloomy appearance, as well as from the mephitic vapours it exhaled, to be the entrance to the infernal world, and identified with it.

AVER'ROeS, an Arabian physician and philosopher, a Moor by birth and a native of Cordova; devoted himself to the study and the exposition of Aristotle, earning for himself the t.i.tle of the ”Commentator,” though he appears to have coupled with the philosophy of Aristotle the Oriental pantheistic doctrine of emanations (1126-1198).

AVERSA (24), an Italian town 8 m. from Naples, amid vineyards and orange groves; much resorted to by the Neapolitans.