he published in 1890 an account of the magnetic observations made by him in the course of several journeys to
the Red Sea and the Levant. The general account of the
travels of the two brothers was published by Arnaud in
1868 under the title of Douze ans dans la Haute-Ethiopie.
Both brothers received the grand medal of the Paris
Geographical Society in 1850. Antoine was a Knight of
the Legion of Honour and a member of the Academy of
Sciences. He died in 1897, and, subject to the life interest of his wife, bequeathed an estate in the Pyrenees,
yielding 40,000 francs a year, to the Academy of Sciences,
on condition of its producing within fifty years a catalogue
of half-a-million stars.
His brother Arnaud died in 1893.
Abbas II., Khedive of Egypt.—Abbas Helmi Pasha, born in 1874, succeeded his father, Tewfik Pasha, as Khedive of Egypt in 1892. He was barely of age according to the Turkish law, which fixes majority at eighteen in cases of succession to the throne. He came straight from his college at Vienna to Cairo, where his accession was celebrated with great pomp, and the firman from the Sultan confirming him in all the powers and privileges and territorial rights which his father enjoyed was read from the steps of the Palace in Abdin Square. He is the great-great-grandson of Mehemet Ali, the founder of the present Egyptian dynasty. When quite a boy he visited England, and did not see it again until he paid a viceregal visit in 1899. He had an English tutor for some time in Cairo, and then went to school in Lausanne, and from there he passed on to the Theresianum in Vienna, whence he was called to the throne by the premature and sudden death of his father. Turkish is his mother tongue, but he talks Arabic with great fluency and speaks English, French, and German very well. For some time he did not co-operate very cordially with Great Britain. He was young and eager to exercise his new power. His throne and life had not been saved for him by the British, as was the case with his father. He was surrounded by intriguers who were playing a game of their own, and for some time he appeared almost disposed to be as reactionary as his great-uncle, Abbas I. But in process of time he learnt to understand the importance of British counsels. During his visit to England in 1899 he frankly acknowledged the great good the British had done in Egypt, and declared himself ready to follow their advice and to co-operate with the British officials administering Egyptian affairs. The establishment of a sound system of native justice, the great remission of taxation, the reconquest of the Soudan, the inauguration of the stupendous irrigation works at Assouan, the increase of cheap, sound education, have each received his approval and all the assistance he could give. The waters of oblivion cover the quarrel, based on unfounded accusations, which he chose to have with Sir H. (afterwards Lord) Kitchener when that general was Commander-in-Chief of the Egyptian army; and no one more than the Khedive rejoiced over the battle of Omdurman. Agriculture and all the interests of farming are dearer to the heart of the Khedive than statecraft. At Koubah, near Cairo, he has a farm of cattle and horses that would do credit to any agricultural show in England, and at Montaza, near Alexandria, he has a similar establishment. He rides well, drives well, rises early, neither smokes nor drinks. The Vice-Reine or Khediviah, his wife, has given him first a daughter and then a son, and the latter is the heir to the throne.
Abbas-Tuman, a spa situated in Caucasia, government of Tiflis, on a mountain road of Akhaltsykh, 50 miles from the Borzhom railway station, very picturesquely situated at an altitude of 4413 feet. It has a high-level astronomical observatory.
Abbazia, a popular summer and winter resort on the Gulf of Fiume, in the Austrian province of Istria, in a sheltered situation at the foot of the Monte Maggiore. The average temperature is 77° in summer and 50° in winter. The old abbey, from which the place derives its name, has been converted into a villa. Local population (1890), 1192 (1900), 2343.
Abbeville, chief town of arrondissement, in the department of Somme, France, 28 miles N.W. of Amiens, on railway from Paris to Boulogne and Calais. It is a very important industrial centre; and, in addition to its old-established textile productions, hemp-spinning, sugar manufacture, and ship-building are among the industries, and there is active commerce in grain and textile fabrics. Population (1881), 18,065; (1891), 18,022; (1896), 19,669.
Abbiategrasso, a town of Lombardy, prov. Milan, Italy, 17 miles S.W. from Milan on the Bereguardo Canal. It is the seat of one of the new commercial courts of arbitration of the prov. of Milan. Population, 7025 (1881); 12,184 (1901).
Abbot, Ezra (1819-1884), American biblical scholar, was born in Jackson, Maine, 28th April 1819. He graduated at Bowdoin College in 1840 ; was appointed assistant librarian of Harvard University in 1856; and in 1872 became professor of New Testament criticism and interpretation in the divinity school of the same institution. For some time previously his studies had been chiefly in Oriental languages and the textual criticism of the New Testament, though his work as a bibliographer had shown such results as the exhaustive list of writings (5300 in all) on the doctrine of the Future Life, appended to W. R. Alger’s work on that subject. His publications, though always of the most thorough and most scholarly character, were to a large extent dispersed in the pages of reviews, dictionaries, concordances, texts edited by others, Unitarian controversial treatises, &c.; but he took a more conspicuous and more personal part in the preparation (with the Baptist scholar Horatio B. Hackett) of the enlarged American edition of Dr (afterwards Sir) William Smith’s Dictionary of the Bible (1867-70), and was an efficient member of the American revision committee employed in connexion with the Revised Version (1881-85) of the King James Bible. His principal single production, representing his scholarly method and conservative conclusions, was The Authorship of the Fourth Gospel; External Evidences (1880; second edition, with other essays, 1888), deemed by Dr Philip Schaff and other scholars the ablest defence, based on external evidence, of the Johannean authorship. Abbot, though a layman, received the degree of D.D. from Harvard in 1872. He died in Cambridge, Massachusetts, 21st March 1884.
Abbott, Edwin Abbott, D.D. (1838), English theological writer, educationalist, and scholar, formerly headmaster of the City of London school, son of the late Edwin Abbott, headmaster of the philological school, Marylebone, was born 20th December 1838. He was educated at the City of London school and at Cambridge, where he took the highest honours in the classical, mathematical, and theological triposes (senior classic, Chancellor’s medallist, and senior optime, 1861; 1st cl. Theology, 1862), and became fellow of his College (St John’s). In 1862 he was ordained, taking priest’s orders in 1863. After holding masterships at King Edward’s School, Birmingham, and at Clifton College, he succeeded
