All the

ABYSSI- pardon, indeed, for calling him an assassin, as he is NIA. not so merciful as to aim at the life, but, on the contrary, to keep the beast alive till he be totally eaten up. Having satisfied the Mosaical law, according to his conception, by pouring these six or seven drops upon the ground, two or more of them fall to work: on the back of the beast, and on each side of the spine, they cut skin-deep; then putting their fingers between the flesh and the skin, they begin to strip the hide of the animal half way down his ribs, and so on to the buttock, cutting the skin wherever it hinders them, commodiously to strip the poor animal bare. flesh on the buttocks is cut off then, and in solid square pieces, without bones or much effusion of blood; and the prodigious noise the animal makes is a signal for the company to sit down to table. "There are then laid before every guest, instead of plates, round cakes, if I may so call them, about twice as big as a pancake, and something thicker and tougher. It is unleavened bread, of a sourish taste, far from being disagreeable, and very easily digested, made of a grain called teff. It is of different colours, from black to the colour of the whitest wheat bread, Three or four of these cakes are generally put uppermost, for the food of the person opposite to whose seat they are placed. Beneath these are four or five of ordinary bread, and of a blackish kind. These serve the master to wipe his fingers upon, and afterwards the servant for bread to his dinner.

"Two or three servants then come, each with a square piece of beef in their bare hands, laying it upon the cakes of teff, placed like dishes down the table, without cloth or any thing else beneath them. By this time all the guests have knives in their hands, and the men have the large crooked ones, which they put to all sorts of uses during the time of war. The women have small clasped knives; such as the worst of the kind made at Birmingham, sold for a penny each.

"The company are so ranged, that one man sits between two women; the man with his long knife cuts a thin piece, which would be thought a good beef-steak in England, while you see the motion of the fibres yet perfectly distinct, and alive in the flesh. No man in Abyssinia, of any fashion whatever, feeds himself, or touches his own meat. The women take the steak, and cut it lengthways like strings, about the thickness of your little finger, then crossways into square pieces, something smaller than dice. This they lay upon a piece of the teff bread, strongly powdered with black pepper, or Cayenne pepper and fossil salt; they then wrap it up in the teff bread like a cartridge.

"In the mean time, the man having put down his knife, with each hand resting upon his neighbour's knee, his body stooping, his head low and forward, and mouth open, very like an ideot, turns to the one whose cartridge is first ready, who stuffs the whole of it into his mouth, which is so full that he is in constant danger of being choked. This is a mark of grandeur. The greater a man would seem to be, the larger a piece he takes in his mouth; and the more noise he makes in chewing it, the more polite he is thought to be. They have indeed a proverb that says, beggars and thieves only eat small pieces, or without making a noise.' Having dispatched this morsel, which he does very expeditiously, his next female neighbour holds forth another cartridge, which goes the same way, and

ΝΙΑ.

so on till he is satisfied. He never drinks till he has ABYSSI finished eating; and before he begins, in gratitude to the fair ones that fed him, he makes up two small rolls of the same kind and form; each of his neighbours open their mouths at the same time, while with each hand he puts their portion into their mouths. He then falls to drinking out of a large handsome horn; the ladies eat till they are satisfied, and then all drink together, Vive la joye et la jeunesse!' A great deal of joke and mirth goes round, very seldom with any mixture of acrimony or ill-humour.

"At this time the unfortunate victim at the door is bleeding indeed, but bleeding little. As long as they can cut off the flesh from his bones, they do not meddle with the thighs, or the parts where the great arteries are. At last they fall upon the thighs likewise; and soon after, the animal bleeding to death, becomes so tough, that the cannibals, who have the rest of it to eat, find very hard work to separate the flesh from the bones with their teeth, like dogs."

As the restraints of morality and honour have no Marriage. influence upon the Abyssinians it is easy to perceive that marriage must prove but a very slender tie; indeed Mr. Bruce says, that there is no such thing, unless that which is contracted by mutual consent without any form, subsisting only till dissolved by dissent of one or other, and to be renewed as often as it is agreeable to both parties, who, when they please, cohabit together, after having been divorced and connected with others. "I remember," says he, to have been once at Koscam; in presence of the Iteghe, when in the circle there was a woman of great quality, and seven men who had all been her husbands, none of whom was the happy spouse at that time." There is no distinction of legitimate and illegitimate children; upon separation they are equally divided; the eldest son falls to the mother's first choice, and the eldest daughter to the father. If there is but one daughter, and all the rest sons, she is assigned to the father. If there is but one son, and all the rest daughters, he is the right of the mother. If the numbers are unequal after the first election, the rest are divided by lot. In a few rare instances some ceremony is used at a marriage, but the king himself only sends a message to the lady he chooses.

From some of the practices already detailed,

we should be induced to believe that the Abyssinians were totally destitute of religion; or if they professed it, that it must be either a strange superstition, or a mere nominal faith. The latter is, in truth, the case; for, however barbarous their customs, and detestable their conduct, they assume the distinctive character of Christianity, which, however, is strangely distorted.

RELIGION.-The Abyssinians are said to have been Conversion converted to the Christian religion by Frumepatius, in to Christhe year 333. They are described as a branch of the tianity. Copts or Jacobites, with whom they agree in admitting but one nature in Jesus Christ, and rejecting the council of Chalcedon; on which account they are also called Eutychians and Monophysites. The term Copt properly applies only to those Christians who live in Egypt, Nubia, and the countries adjacent. The Abyssinian church is governed by a bishop or metropolitan styled Abuna, who is appointed by the Coptic patriarch of Alexandria residing at Cairo. The Abuna

NIA.

ABYSSI- being a foreigner, and generally ignorant of the language and manners of the country, he is not permitted to meddle with the affairs of the government: his principal employment is the ordination of priests, deacons, and monks. Next in dignity is the Komos, or Hegumenos, a kind of arch-presbyter, who has the inferior priests and deacons, with the secular affairs of the parish, under his inspection. The deacons occupy the lowest rank of priesthood. They have canons also, and monks the former of whom inarry; the latter, at their admission, vow celibacy, but with a reservation, making a promise aloud before their superior to keep chastity; but adding in a low voice or whisper, as you keep it. The Debtarahs, a set of chanters who assist in the musical parts of the service, are in general estimation, even more so than the Komos, though the latter be superior in rank. The emperor alone takes cognizance of all ecclesiastical causes, except a few smaller ones reserved to the judges; and confers all benefices, except that of Abuna.

Monks.'

The monks are divided into two classes, those of Debra Libanos, and those of St. Eustathius. They have not, properly speaking, any convents, but inhabit separate houses erected round their church. Their ignorance is extreme. The superior of the monks of Mahebar Selassé, in the north-west part of Abyssinia, is the Itchegué, who is of greater consequence in turbulent times than the Abuna. He is ordained by two chief priests holding a white cloth or veil, over his head, and a third repeating a prayer; after which they all lay their hands on his head, and join together in singing psalms. The churches are very numerous, owing to the prevalence of an opinion among the great, that whoever leaves a fund to build a church, or has erected one during his life, makes a sufficient atonement for all his sins. They are usually erected on eminences, in the vicinity of running water, for the purpose of affording facilities to the purifications and ablutions, which they practise according to the Levitical law. The churches are surrounded with rows of Virginia cedar, and being circular, with conical summits and thatched roofs, and encompassed on the outside with pillars of cedar, to which the roof projecting eight feet beyond the wall is fixed, furnish an agreeable walk in the hot or rainy season, and diversify the scenery. The internal partition and arrangement of the church is that prescribed by the Mosaic law; and many of the ceremonies and observances in their mode of worship, are obviously derived from the ceremonial rites of the Jewish religion.

The religion of Abyssinia is, in reality, a strange compound of Judaism, Christianity, and superstition; the former appears to predominate. They practise circumcision; and extend it to both sexes. They observe both Saturday and Sunday as Sabbaths: they eat no meats prohibited by the law of Moses: women are obliged to the legal purifications, and brothers marry their brothers' wives. Their festivals and saints are numberless. As they celebrate the epiphany with peculiar festivity, in commemoration of

ABYSSINIAN CHURCH, in Ecclesiastical History, the name given to the church established in Abyssinia. See the preceding article on the RELIGION of the Abyssinians.

ACACALOTL, in Ornithology, the name of a bird

NIA.

ACACIA.

Christ's baptism, and sport in ponds and rivers, some ABYSSIhave supposed they undergo baptism every year. One of their saints' days is consecrated to Balaam's ass: another to Pilate and his wife; because Pilate washed his hands before he pronounced sentence on Christ, and his wife desired him to have nothing to do with the blood of that just person. They have four seasons of lent: the great lent commences ten days earlier than ours, and is observed with so much severity, that many abstain even from fish, because St. Paul says there is one kind of flesh of men, and another of fishes. They at least equal the church of Rome in miracles and legends of saints; which occasioned no inconsiderable embarrassment to the Jesuits, whom they presented with such accounts of miracles wrought by their saints, in proof of their religion, and those so well circumstantiated and attested, that the missionaries thought themselves obliged to deny miracles to be any evidence of the truth of a religion. Prayer for the dead is common, and invocation of saints and angels; and such is their veneration for the virgin, that they charged the Jesuits with deficiency in this respect. Images in painting decorate their churches, and excite their reverential regard; at the same time they abhor all images in relievo, except the cross. They maintain that the soul of man is not created; because, say they, God finished all his works on the sixth day. They admit the apocryphal books, and the canons of the apostles, as well as the apostolical constitutions, to be genuine; but Solomon's Song they consider merely as a love poem in honour of Pharaoh's daughter. It is uncertain whether they believe in the doctrine of transubstantiation; Ludolph and Bruce differ on this question: but the latter affirms that they are now, with regard to doctrine, as great heretics, and with respect to morals as corrupt, as the Jesuits have represented them.

Abyssinia contains many Jews, Mahometans, and Pagans. The former have always been settled there in considerable numbers; but some of them have been proselyted to Christianity, either by coercion or from mercenary motives: the rest chiefly occupy. the mountainous districts, where they retain the ancient distinctions of Caraites and Talmudists. Ludolf mentions another sect, inhabiting the frontiers (1. i. c. 14.) between them and the Caffres, who dwell along the Nile, and who are supposed to descend from the captives taken by the kings of Assyria and Babylon, or from those who were dispersed over the earth by the destruction of Jerusalem. They were never incorporated with the other Jews, but have always been regarded as Salara, or strangers and exiles. Their Bible is in the corrupt Talmudic dialect. The Mahometans amount to about one-third of the inhabitants, and are intermixed with the Christians. Some of them cultivate the soil, but the most opulent are the factors, who have engrossed the trade of the Red sea. The Pagans chiefly consist of the Gallas. Others are, besides, diffused scantily through the country.

called by some corvus aquaticus, or the water raven: properly the pelicanus carbo, or cormorant; the Tantalus Mexicanus of Gmelin.

ACACIA, EGYPTIAN THORN, or BINDING BEANTREE, in the Linnæan system of Botany, a species

DEMY.

ACACIA. of mimosa, of the class Polygamia, and order Monœcia. The flowers of this plant are used by ACA- the Chinese to produce that yellow which we see in their silks and stuffs, and in their painting on paper. The flowers being gathered before they are fully open, are gently heated in a clean earthen vessel, till they become dry and yellow; water is added, till there is enough to hold the flowers incorporated together. This mixture they boil till it becomes thick and yellow, when it is strained through a piece of coarse silk. Half an ounce of common alum, and an ounce of calcined oyster shells, reduced to a fine powder, is then put into the liquor. The diversity in the shades of yellow is produced by varying the proportion of acacia seeds and flowers: for the deepest yellow a small quantity of Brazil wood is required.

ACACIA, in the Materia Medica, the inspissated juice of the unripe pods of the Mimosa Nilotica of Linnæus. The juice is brought to us from Egypt, in roundish masses, wrapt up in thin bladders. It is a mild astringent. The Egyptians use it as a remedy for spitting of blood, and it may be given in disorders arising from laxity and acrimony, in collyria for strengthening the eyes, and in gargarisms for quinseys. It is with us an ingredient in mithridate and theriaca, but is rarely met with in the shops. German Acacia, the juice of unripe. sloes inspissated nearly to dryness over a gentle fire, being substituted for it.

ACACIA False; ACACIA Three-thorned, or Honeylocust; ACACIA Indiana, and other species. See BOTANY, Div. ii.

ACACIA, among antiquaries, something resembling a roll or bag, seen from the time of Anastasius on medals, in the hands of several consuls and emperors, to remind them of their mortality.

ACACIANS, the name of several sects of heretics, followers of Acacius, bishop of Cæsarea, who flourished in the fourth century. Some of them maintained, that the Son was only a similar, not the same, substance with the Father; and others, that he was not only a distinct but a dissimilar substance.

ACAD, ACHAD, or ARCHAD, the town in which Nimrod reigned, situated in Babylonia, eastward of the Tigris.

ACADEME.
ACADEMY.

ACADEMIAN.

Academus, an Athenian, in whose groves a sect of Grecian philosophers were accustomed ACADEM'ICAL. to assemble. To them and their ACADEMICALLY. philosophy the words are still ACADEMICIAN. applied, and more generally to ACADEM'ICK, n. any assembly or society of per ACADEMICK, adj. sons, where learning and philoACAD'EMIST. sophy are the proposed objects; to universities, and schools, public and private. But ye withdrowen fro me this man, that he hath been nourished in my studies or scholes of Eleatices, and of Achademicis in Greece. Chaucer's Bacius. b. i. fol. 211, c. iv.

From women's eyes this doctrine I deriue,
They sparcle still the right promethean fire,
They are the bookes, the arts, the achademes,
That shew, containe, and nourish all the world:
Else none at all in ought proues excellent.

Shakespeare's L's L. Lost, p. 135, act iv. sc. 3.
EUST. Fye, fye, what things these academicks are;
These book-worms, how they look!

EYRE. They're mere images,

No gentle motion or behaviour in 'en.

Beaumont and Fletcher's Elder Brother, act ii. sc. 1.

Wide through poetic scenes the genius roves, Or wanders wild in academic groves:

Thus nature our society adores,

Where Tindal dictates, and Silenus snores.

Ib.

Pope's Dunciad, b. iv. Unhappily, by too short a view of things, you have been apt to mistake the completion of your academic courses for the completion Warburton's Charges. of your theologic studies.

The academics always talk of doubt and suspense of judgment, of danger in hasty determinations, of confining to very narrow bounds the inquiries of the understanding, and of renouncing all speculations which lie not within the limits of common life and practice. Hume's Essays.

In a conference of the French Academy, one of the academicians desired to have their opinion on the conduct of Paul Veronese, who, though a painter of great consideration, had, contrary to the strict the principal figure in shade. rules of art, in his picture of Perseus and Andromeda, represented

Sir Jos. Reynolds' Discourses.

of the school of Socrates and Plato, Their modern The ACADEMICS, or ACADEMISTS, were disciples designation, since the restoration of learning, is Platonists.

The ancient academical philosophy was distinguished by a certain degree of doubt respecting the principles of knowledge; which, however, was cherished and recommended by Plato, not to undermine truth, but to promote that caution in the inquirer, which shall hold the mind in a due state of balance between implicit admission and absolute scepticism. To the latter, indeed, the previous attempts at philosophising had obviously tended, by impressing the idea through their numberless and contradictory hypotheses, that truth was incomprehensible by the human mind. It was to remedy this abuse, that Plato assumed the principles of the academic philosophy.

The school of Plato was divided into the Old, the Middle, and the New Academy. The former consisted of those of his disciples who taught the doctrine of their master without any mixture; of whom the principal were Speusippus, Xenocrates, Polemo, Crantor, and Crates. Upon the death of the latter, in the third century before Christ, the Middle Academy was founded by Arcesilaus of Eolis, who affirmed that though there was a certainty in the nature of things, yet every thing is uncertain to the human understanding, and all confident assertions are absurd. His successors were Lacydes, Evander, and Egesinus. This system was afterwards modified by Carneades, a Cyrenian, who established the New Academy, and was succeeded by Clitomachus, Philo of Larissa, and Antiochus of Ascalon; after whom, in the 175th olympiad, the school was transferred to Rome. Warburton considers both the latter Academies as really the same, and essentially sceptical. (Div. Legation, vol. ii.).

ACA

THE ancient term ACADEMY, is descriptive of a garDEMY. den, villa, or grove, in the immediate vicinity of Athens, where Plato taught, as mentioned in the preceding article. Some have derived the name from Cadmus, who introduced letters from Phoenicia into Greece, as well as the learning of Egypt: but its origin is commonly ascribed to Academus, or Ecademus, who lived in the time of Theseus, and who bequeathed it to the citizens for a gymnasium. It was adorned by Cimon with fountains, trees, and walks, which Sylla employed in making battering engines during the siege of Athens. Hipparchus enclosed it with a wall, the cost of which was only defrayed by imposing a heavy taxation upon the people hence, 'IrapуTEXOV, became afterwards a proverbial expression to denote any very expensive business. This delightful retirement was also used as a place of burial for illustrious men.

Ptolemy Soter.

Thoedosius.

Charle

Greeks in

Italy.

ACADEMY, is now commonly used to signify a society of learned men, associated for the advancement of the arts or sciences. Ptolemy Soter, for the encouragement and improvement of the liberal arts in his dominions, founded an academy at Alexandria, and provided it with a collection of books, which was the foundation of the Alexandrian library.

Theodosius the younger established an academy at Constantinople, and appointed professors of every science, with the view of making it a rival institution to that at Rome; which, with the other literary seminaries, had been destroyed by the Goths, about the end of the fourth and the beginning of the fifth centuries.

The first academy of which we have any account, was established by Charlemagne, at the instigation of his preceptor Alcuin. It consisted of the principal men of learning in the court, and the emperor was himself a member. The language of the country was at that period in a very barbarous state, and one considerable object of the institution was to improve it, as well as to advance the interests of polite literature in general, by promoting a diligent attention to the writings of antiquity. Each member was required to give an account of the authors he read; and at length they even assumed the names of the ancient authors with whom they were most pleased.

However honourable, and for the time useful, were the exertions of Alcuin, the institution perished at his death; and during several subsequent ages no attempts were made to advance the interests of learning. The occasional appearance of literary individuals, resembled only the meteors that dart through the midnight gloom, and after diffusing a momentary splendour, vanish for ever. There was no combination of effort, no union of mind; no association to promote or even protect knowledge: and if a happy superstition had not preserved the compositions of antiquity in the cells of the monks, every spark of light must have been extinguished.

The overthrow of the Roman empire by the Turks, in 1453, induced several eminent Greek scholars to settle in the western parts of Europe, particularly in Italy, where they imported vast treasures of Grecian antiquity, and were patronized by Pope Nicholas V. and by the Medicean family. This led to the forma

VOL. XVII.

Acad. Nat.

We shall arrange our account of the principal academies according to their respective subjects. MEDICAL. The Academia Nature Curiosorum, Medical called also the Leopoldine academy, was founded in Curiosorum, 1652, by Jo. Laur. Bauschius, a physician of Swin- or Leop urth, in the circle of Franconia; who, having invited Acad. other physicians to a free communication of their cases and discoveries, was at length elected president of a new society formed upon the general basis of such communications. The first meeting was held Jan. 1. 1652. The contributions on given subjects proposed every six months by the president, were at first published separately; but in 1670, a resolution was adopted to publish a volume of observations every year. The first volume appeared in 1684, under the title of Ephemerides, which was followed, with some interruptions, by others of different titles. In 1687, the emperor Leopold took the society under his protection, who conferred several privileges on the members, and elevated their presidents to the dignity of counts palatine of the holy Roman empire. From him it took the name of CæsareoLeopoldina Nature Curiosorum Academia, or the Leopoldine Academy. This academy had no fixed residence, or regular assemblies, but only an office, first established at Breslau, and afterwards removed to Nuremberg, where all communications are sent. It consisted of a president, two secretaries, and colleagues or members. The colleagues, at their admission, obliged themselves to choose some subject out of the animal, vegetable, or mineral kingdom, for discussion, provided it had not been treated of by any colleague before; and to furnish materials for the Annual Ephemerides. Each member was required to bear, as a symbol of the academy, a gold ring, on which was a book open, with an eye on the front. The opposite side had the motto of the academy, Nunquam otiosus. See BUCHNERI Hist. Acad. Naturæ Curiosorum, Hal. 1756. Other academies of the same name were established on the continent, namely, at Palermo, in 1645; in Spain, in 1652; at Venice, in 1701; and at Geneva, in 1715.

CHIRURGICAL. The Royal Academy of Surgeons, Chirurgical was instituted at Paris, in 1731, the members of which Acad. at are not only to publish their own observations, im- Paris. provements, and discoveries, but to communicate all that is written on surgery, with a view of furnishing a complete history of the art. A question in surgery is annually proposed, and a gold medal of five hundred livres value given for the best answer.

The Academy of Surgery at Vienna, was instituted by Academy at Francis II. in 1783, and placed under the direction of Vienna. Brambilla. At first there were only two professors, to whose instruction were committed 130 young men, thirty of whom had formerly been surgeons in the army but the number, both of the teachers and pupils, has been considerably increased. Adjacent to the building is a good botanical garden. The emperor has provided a large and splendid edifice in Vienna, which affords accommodation to the teachers, the students, pregnant women, patients for clinical lectures, and servants. He also bestowed upon this academy a medical

H