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ing luggage and removing their families, which afford accommodations for twenty persons. There is no authentic account of their numbers. They are represented as being without any kind of government, and nothing is known of their religious notions. They wrap up the dead in skins, and deposit the body, with the arms of the deceased, in the hollow of a rock. In 1764, the Moravian Brethren from Greenland established a mission in Labrador. They have induced the Esquimaux within their influence to abolish the custom of putting to death widows and orphans, and that of abandoning the aged who were incapable of procuring their own subsistence. The missionaries are of opinion that the Esquimaux originated from Greenland, on account of the great similarity of their manners and customs, and of their language, to those of the Greenlanders.

ESQUIRE; anciently, the person that attended a knight in the time of war, and carried his shield. Those to whom the title of esquire is now due in England, are, all noblemen's younger sons, and the eldest sons of such younger sons; the eldest sons of knights, and their eldest sons; the officers of the king's courts, and of his household d; counsellors at law, justices of the peace, &c., though the latter are only esquires in reputation: besides, a justice of the peace holds this title no longer than he is in commission, in case he is not otherwise qualified to bear it; but a sheriff of a county, who is a superior officer, retains the title of esquire during life, in consequence of the trust once reposed in him. The heads of some ancient families are esquires by right of prescription.

Ess, Charles van, born in 1770, at Warburg, in the bishopric of Paderborn, entered the Benedictine abbey of Huysburg, near Halberstadt, in 1788, where he subsequently became prior; but, on the suppression of the abbey, in 1804, he became a parish preacher at this place. In 1811, the bishop of Paderborn appointed him episcopal commissioner, with the full powers of vicar-general in the departments of the Elbe and Saal. In this situation, he evinced a great predilection for the Roman see. It is said that he took but little part in the translation of the New Testament which was published under his and his brother's name, and he subsequently disclaimed any coöperation in it. In 1810, he wrote a History of the Abbey of Huysburg, and, at the time of the Protestant jubilee, in 1817, a Short

History of Religion, which was publicly burnt by the scholars in Halberstadt, at the celebration of the festival of the reformation, and which was answered by some scholars in the vicinity. He died Oct. 22, 1824.—His brother, Leander van Ess, Benedictine of the abbey of Marienműnster, in the territory of Paderborn, and, at a later period, a parish priest at Schwalenberg, in the principality of Lippe, and, since 1813, professor extraordinary of theology, and preacher at Marburg, also one of the directors of the seminary for teachers at that city, has distinguished himself by his translation of the New Testament, published at Sulzbach, by Seidel. The pope, it is true, has lately prohibited this translation; but, in 1820, a new edition appeared, under the name of Leander only. This translation has had a great influence upon the German Catholics.

ESSAYING. (See Assaying.)

ESSENES, or ESSEANS; a sect among the Jews, the origin of which is unknown, as well as the etymology of their name. They are first mentioned in the book of Maccabees, about B. C. 150. They lived in solitude, and had all their possessions in common. Certain examinations preceded the admission of candidates to their society. Philo says, that they sacrificed no living creature, and that they shunned cities. Josephus says, that they sent presents to the temple, but offered no sacrifices there. They had purer ideas of God than the Jews commonly entertained, a strict code of morals, and a Pythagorean manner of life. Instead of performing external rites, they devoted themselves to prayer and silent devotion, scrupulously observed the Sabbath, were extremely abstinent, and healed diseases of every kind by roots and herbs. They rejected the subtilties of the Pharisees and the epicureanism of the Sadducees. History no where supports the supposition that Jesus and John were members of this body. (See Bellermann's Ancient Accounts of the Essenes and Therapeuta, Berlin, 1821.) The principal ancient writers who give an account of this sect are Josephus, Philo and Pliny.

ESSENTIAL OILS. This name is applied to those volatile fluids usually obtained from aromatic plants, by subjecting them to distillation with water. The oil is volatilized with the aqueous vapor, and is easily condensed; a small portion of it is retained in solution by the water; but the greater part separates, and is obtained pure from the difference in their specific gravity. In some instances, as, for exam

ple, in the rind of the orange and lemon, the oil exists in distinct vesicles, and may be obtained by expression. The principal volatile or essential oils are those of turpentine, aniseed, nutmeg, lavender, cloves, caraway, peppermint, spearmint, sassafras, camomile and citron. The taste of these oils is acrid and burning; and their odor very pungent, generally resembling the taste and smell of the vegetables affording them. They are generally fluid, and remain so even at a low temperature; but some congeal at a very moderate degree of cold, and others are naturally concrete. They are extremely volatile, and boil at a temperature considerably above that of boiling water; thus oil of turpentine boils at 315°. They are very soluble in strong alcohol, but, on adding water largely, are precipitated. They are soluble in ether in like manner, but do not form soaps with the alkalies, by which they are distinguished from the fixed oils. They are readily inflamed by strong nitric acid; especially with the precaution of adding a little sulphuric acid to render the former more concentrated. Exposed to the action of the air, they undergo an alteration in consequence of the absorption of oxygen, become thickened, and gradually change into a solid matter, resembling the true resins. When digested with sulphur, they unite with it, forming what have been called balsams of sulphur. One of the most useful and abundant of the essential oils is that of turpentine, commonly called spirit of turpentine. It is obtained by distilling turpentine and water, in due proportions, from a copper alembic. It is perfectly limpid and colorless, has a strong smell, a bitterish taste, boils at 316°, and is extremely inflammable. It is the solvent employed in making a variety of varnishes; but for purposes of nicety, it requires to be rectified by a second distillation. In general, the volatile oils are used in the practice of medicine, or as perfumes. Those applied to the latter use, as the essence of rose, of jasmine, violet, &c., are possessed of a more feeble odor, and, being obtained from the flowers of their respective plants, require much care in their preparation. This is done by spreading upon white wool, impregnated with olive oil, the petals of the flowers, and leaving them for some time, covered over with a woollen cloth, upon which flowers are also scattered. The flowers are renewed from time to time, until the olive oil employed appears to be saturated with the oil of the flowers, when this last is separated by digesting the wool in alcohol.

ESSEQUIBO; a river of English Guiana, which flows into the Atlantic; lon. 58° 30 W.; lat. 7° N. It is 20 miles wide at its mouth, but difficult of navigation, on account of the sand banks, which run in different directions across its entrance. It contains a number of islands. The influence of the tide is felt about 100 miles up the river.

ESSEQUIBO; a settlement of English Guiana, on the borders of the above river, originally belonging to the Dutch, but, after having several times changed possessors, was finally ceded to Great Britain in 1814. The settlement is flourishing, the country well cultivated, and extremely fertile, in coffee, cotton, cocoa and sugar. ESSEX, earl of, (See Devereux.)

There

ESSEX; a post-town in Essex county, New York, on the western shore of lake Champlain; 14 miles south-west of Burlington, 16 from Elizabethtown. is a flourishing village on the lake in this township, which has considerable trade. The celebrated split rock is in this township, 5 miles south of the village. It projects 50 yards into lake Champlain; the point, consisting of about half an acre, and covered with trees, is separated from the main rock about 20 feet. The height of the rock, on each side of the opening, is about 20 feet. It appears to have been separated by some great convulsion, and is esteemed a great curiosity.

ESSLINGEN. (See Aspern.)

ESTACHAR, or ESTAKAR, or ISTACHAR; a town in Persia, in Chusistan; 30 miles N. N. E. of Schiras, 160 S. S. E. of Ispahan; lon. 53° 40′ E.; lat. 30° 5 N. Near it are the ruins of ancient Persepolis. These ruins are on a plain, 6 miles in breadth, and 105 in length, from northwest to south-east. It is usually called Murdasjo, and the inhabitants pretend that it included 880 villages. The soil is chiefly converted into arable land, and watered by a great number of rivulets. According to Le Bruyn, no traces of the city now remain; the magnificent ruins which he saw in the year 1704, and of which he has given a description, with many plates, are those of the royal palace of the ancient kings of Persia, which the Persians call Chilminar, or Chalmenaer, which signifies forty columns. Among other ruins are those of a tomb, supposed to be the tomb of Darius.

ESTAFET; a particular kind of courier, who goes only a certain distance, when he is relieved, like a mail-carrier. He rides on horseback, and is furnished by the post-office. Estafettes travel faster

than the mails, and may be had at any time on the European continent. They are often employed by merchants to convey information of fluctuations in the stocks, the early knowledge of which is often of the highest importance. Estafettes are bound to perform the different stages in a certain time, and not to carry any other letters than those of their employer, without his permission. In Italian, the word is staffetta, in German, staffette, in French, estaffette, in Spanish, estafeta, the Italian being the original. It is probably derived from staffa, a stirrup, staffetta signifying a small stirrup, perhaps formerly used in preference by estafettes.

ESTAFFETTE D'ALGER, L'. At the time of the French expedition to Algiers, in 1830, a semi-weekly paper of this name was published in Africa; it was a political, military, commercial and maritime journal, containing the bulletins, &c., of the armies, describing the engagements with lithographic plans, giving sketches of the African commerce, and of the resources and customs of the country, military anecdotes, &c. Such a paper is unique. We cannot help wishing that Scipio had published a Cursor Africanus, or Alexander an 'Αγγελος ̓Ασιανὸς. But we should then, probably, complain as much of the mass of information as we now do of its defectiveness. The Estaffette is regularly sent to France by steam-boats. ESTAING, Charles Henry, count d', admiral and lieutenant-general of the armies of France before the revolution, was a native of Ravel, in Auvergne, and was descended from an ancient family in that province. Count d'Estaing commenced his career by serving in the East Indies under Lally, when he was taken prisoner by the English, and sent home on his parole. Having engaged in hostilities again before he had been regularly exchanged, he was taken a second time, and imprisoned at Portsmouth. During the American war, he was employed as vice-admiral. At the capture of the island of Grenada he distinguished himself; but on every occasion he showed more courage than conduct or professional skill. He promoted the revolution; and, in 1789, he was appointed a commandant of the national guards at Versailles. In 1791, he addressed to the national assembly a letter full of protestations of attachment to the constitution, on the occasion of the approaching trial of the king. He suffered under the guillotine, 1793, as a counter-revolutionist, at the age of 65.

ESTAMINET (French); a public place where smoking is permitted, which, in France, is not allowed generally in coffeehouses, &c. In the Netherlands, public houses in general are called estaminets, because smoking is permitted in all. Estaminets, with their floods of beer and clouds of smoke, furnish an important part of a Dutchman's happiness. In London, also, the same name has been given to coffeehouses where smoking is permitted.

ESTATE, in law, signifies the title or interest which a person has in lands, tenements, hereditaments, or other effects, the word being derived from the Latin status, which means the condition or circumstance in which a person stands in regard to his property. Estate is real or personal. The phrase personal estate is applicable not only to movables, goods, money, bonds, notes, but also to some fixtures temporarily attached to lands or buildings; and the distinction between those fixtures which are temporarily such, and those which belong to, and form a part of the house, or other real estate, is of importance, as this distinction will determine how it is to be attached on mesne process, or seized and sold, or set off on an execution, and also how it descends on the decease of the proprietor. But personal estate also applies to some interests in lands or houses; thus a lease of them for a certain number of years, though it be more than a hundred, and so longer than any person is likely to live, is personal estate; and yet an estate for the life of the owner, or of any other person, in these subjects, though the person, by whose life the interest is limited, may be ever so old or infirm, and likely to survive ever so short a time, is real estate, and is subject to the law regulating such estate, in regard to sales and descents. Real estate in lands is of various kinds and descriptions, according to the quantity of interest, its duration, or the time by which it is limited in respect to its commencement or termination, and the number and condition of the owners. A fee simple is the amplest estate which the law admits of. (See Fee.) A freehold is an estate for the life of any person or persons, or any greater estate. An estate in tail is one limited to certain heirs. (See Entail.) Only real estate and a freehold greater than for the life of one person, can be entailed; but such an estate is of various kinds, such as tail-male, where it descends, in successive order, to the male heirs of the grantee in direct descent; tail-female, where it is thus limited to the female de

scendants: if it goes in successive order to his descendants without any distinction, it is called an estate in tail-general; if it is limited to certain descendants, as the children of a certain wife, it is an estate in tail-special. An estate in remainder is one of which the owner is to come into possession after the expiration of an intermediate estate of another person, or number of persons or heirs; and so also is an estate in reversion: thus, if one grants an estate tail, this estate tail may expire, in which case the lands will come back or revert to the grantor, and his estate, which still remains to him after he has granted the estate tail, is therefore called a reversion. As to the number of owners, an estate in common is a freehold belonging to more than one proprietor, in undivided shares; and so also is an estate in jointtenancy; but there is this distinction between these two kinds of estates, that when one joint-tenant dies, his share goes to the other joint-tenants, which is not the case in tenancies in common. An estate in coparcenary arises when an estate in fee simple descends, on the decease of the owner, to his daughters, sisters, aunts, or female cousins, or their representatives, being females; and they are called coparceners, or, for brevity, parceners. Real estate left to any one by will is called a devise, or an estate by devise, in distinction from a bequest of personal property, which is called a legacy.

ESTATES (in politics). Man, in the rudest state of human existence, lives almost entirely independent. We cannot properly speak of liberty in such a state, because liberty, truly so called, implies the protection of each man's rights by the laws of an organized society, the main object of political institutions being to secure individual liberty, by affording equal protection to all. But what a number of gradations are to be found between the lawlessness of the savage and the rational independence of the citizen of a free state. There are several prominent stages in the progress of man from the one to the other of these points:-a. The state of unsettled and roving tribes, the hunters and nomades. Though very great difference exists among nations in this state, yet all political developement is so much checked by the nonexistence of landed property (the beginning of proper civilization), that we may class them all together. b. The patriarchal state, in which the authority and power of the father of a family (patria potestas), that of the magistrate and of the priest are united in one person: this is the first rude begin

ning of political civilization.* c. The state in which the authority of the father and the magistrate are separated, but that of the priest and the magistrate still remain blended. This is the theocratic state. In this, priests form a separate caste, and are the rulers. d. When the authority of the father, priest and magistrate are separated, and the distinction between the family and state is clearly understood, but yet birth decides to what class an individual belongs. This is the state of castes. The whole people is divided into different classes, with different privileges. e. That state of government, which prevails in many parts of Europe, where the nobility have hereditary privileges, and correspond to the castes in the East, whilst the other subjects are divided into classes distinguished by their occupations, as peasants, citizens, &c. f. That state of political society in which all the members have equal privileges and rights, and are subject to equal burdens. In this class must be included several of the republics of antiquity, not

*We cannot abstain here from a few remarks on the gross error of many politicians of Europe, of whom Charles Louis de Haller must be considered the head, on account of his notorious work Restauration der Staatswissenschaft, oder Theorie des natürlichen geselligen Zustandes, der Chimere des Künstlich-bürgerlichen entgegenration of the Science of Politics, or Theory of the gesetzt, Winterthur, 1816-1820, 4 vols. (Restonatural-social State, in Opposition to the Chimera of the artificial-civil). These absolutists ridicule the idea of a social contract, as the basis of the political constitution of a nation, deriving all their arguments against it from the patriarchal origin of the political state. Political unions, say they, no where began with such a contract, but grew out of the relations of families. Haller calls it an idea communicated to him from Heaven, that, the father being the natural ruler of the children, the master stands in the same relation to his slaves, and the prince to his subjects. He says there is no foundation for the notion that princes are made for their subjects, but both are correlative-a very logical deduction, certainly, from the original condition of men! as if the highest branches of mathematics, particularly the exalted and abstract theory of functions, were visionary and groundless, because mathematics began with simple calculations applied to the most ordinary busibanks of the Nile after its inundation! as if the ness of life, geometry, with the surveying of the laws of architecture applied to the erection of the stately cathedral were chimerical, because architecture began with the construction of miserable huts! as if grammatical writing were nonsense, because language began with inarticulate sounds! as if the laws of war, by which its horrors are mitigated, were unfounded, because war began with common murder! Yet Mr. Haller's theory is so well received by the illiberal party in Germany, that a production which most probably would not even have found a publisher in England or the U. States, is there held up as a standard work! (See Constitutions.)

withstanding a large portion of the inhabitants were in servitude; for the slaves, in these cases, were not considered as belonging to the state, were not members of the political society. Such an anomalous form of government as existed in Algiers, where a tribe of soldiers, kept up by perpetual recruits from abroad, and excluding their own children from any share in their political privileges, elected their ruler, and tyrannised over the other inhabitants of the country, without allowing them any rights (although they did not actually treat them as slaves, at least not as the property of individuals),—such a government does not fall under any one of the established divisions, and, in fact, can hardly be regarded in a different light from an association of robbers. That condition of government mentioned under e forms the subject of this article. Estates are those political bodies which partake, either directly or by representation, in the government: they are different from corporations (q. v.), which very often had, and still have, certain political privileges. Estates are of Teutonic origin, being found only in countries occupied by the descendants of Teutonic tribes. They are to be considered as a consequence of the feudal system, which originated from certain customs prevalent among the Germans, and from their conquests. (See Feudal System.) From the feudal system sprang the modern hereditary nobles—a privileged body, partaking essentially in, or, in some instances, chiefly forming the government. (See Nobility.) Bondage became gradually established-an institution, in many cases, of much more recent date than those who profit by it maintain. (See Villenage.) At the same time that the high nobility began to constitute a distinct and hereditary class (which is of much later date than the origin of feudalism), the high clergy, in many countries, began to participate in the government as a body, which they were, in those barbarous times, as much entitled to do as the warlike nobility; since they were the only members of society with whom the little knowledge which had survived the fearful storms of the dark ages had taken refuge. More or less distinct from each other, and from the lower orders of their respective classes, the high nobility and clergy continued to form the estates, which, together with the prince, constituted the general government so far as any general government can be said to have existed, when every feudal lord was, in most respects, entirely independent, and the higher clergy were almost always

feudal lords, so that a conflict of innumerable interests, privileges and liberties prevented any general and orderly administration of government and justice. “That prodigious fabric (as Hume calls it), for several centuries, preserved such a mixture of liberty and oppression, order and anarchy, stability and revolution, as was never experienced in any other age, or any other part of the world." But the time appeared when cities began to claim and assume political rights, the time to which we may apply, in respect of all Europe, what Spelman applies to England at the time of the Norman conquest, Novus seclorum nascitur ordo. It is to the cities that we owe the origin of the third estate, or citizens, from whom, through their contests with the other estates or estate (if the nobility and clergy were united), and through their greater number, which rendered a representation of them necessary, originated more general views of the administration of government and justice, more equitable laws, and more correct notions of individual liberty. To the historian, who sees, amid the conflicts of feudalism, the beginning of the political importance of the cities, it is like the first appearance of the rays of morning after a long and stormy night. (See Cities.) But the power of the other estates was too great; nor was it to be expected that the third estate should be in advance of the age: a general representation was not yet founded. The period from the downfall of the Roman empire to the establishment of the constitution of the U. States, may be called, by way of distinction, the time of privileges, hardly any part of the political system being established, or administered on general principles, or a well organized plan, but almost every thing being done by special privileges and grants; common rights arising from citizenship being hardly recognised, the individual enjoying only certain privileges, as a member of a favored class. The privileges of these three estates, arising from different causes, and acquired in different ways, were, of course, very different. However, the right to grant taxes was common to all, because taxes were at first considered as a mere gift to the prince, it being customary in all the Teutonic estates for the monarch to defray the expenses of government, particularly of war, on account of the large share of property which was every where set aside for him, as has been shown in the article Civil List. (See also Domain.) However, in many countries, the estates were not called together; in

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