the “granary of France.” The northern part of Eure-et-Loir is watered by the Eure, with its tributaries the Vègre, Blaise and Avre, a small western portion by the Huisne, and the south by the Loir with its tributaries the Conie and the Ozanne. The air is pure, the climate mild, dry and not subject to sudden changes. The soil consists, for the most part, either of clay intermixed with sand or of calcareous earth, and is on the whole fruitful. Agriculture is better conducted than in most of the departments of France, and the average yield per acre is greater. Cereals occupy half the surface, wheat and oats being chiefly cultivated. Among the other agricultural products are barley, hemp, flax and various vegetables, including good asparagus. Wine is not extensively produced, nor is it of the best quality; but in some parts, especially in the Perche, there is an abundant supply of apples, from which cider is made as the common drink of the inhabitants. The extensive meadows supply pasturage for a large number of cattle and sheep, and the horses raised in the Perche have a wide reputation as draught animals. Bee-farming is commonly prosecuted. The department produces lime, grindstones and brick-clay. The manufactures are not extensive; but there are flour- and saw-mills, tanneries and leather-works, copper and iron foundries, starch-works, dye-works, distilleries, breweries and potteries; and agricultural implements, cotton and woollen goods, and yarn, hosiery, boots and shoes, sugar, felt hats and paper are made. Eure-et-Loir exports the products of its soil and live-stock; its imports include coal, wine and wearing apparel. It is served by the railways of the Western and the Orléans Companies and by those of the state, but it has no navigable waterways. The department has Chartres for its capital, and is divided into the arrondissements of Chartres, Châteaudun, Dreux and Nogent-le-Rotrou (24 cantons and 426 communes). It forms the diocese of Chartres (province of Paris), and belongs to the académie (educational division) of Paris and the region of the IV. Army Corps. Its court of appeal is at Paris.
Chartres, Dreux, Châteaudun, Nogent-le-Rotrou and Anet are the more noteworthy places in the department (q.v.). At Bonneval the lunatic asylum occupies the 18th-century buildings of a former Benedictine abbey. The abbey church belonged to the 13th century, but only a gateway flanked by two massive towers is left. The château of Maintenon dating from the 16th and 17th centuries was presented by Louis XIV. to Madame de Maintenon, by whom additions were made; the aqueduct (17th century) in the park was designed to carry the water of the Eure to Versailles, but was not completed. There is a fine château of the late 15th century, restored in modern times, at Montigny-le-Gannelon, and another of the 15th, 16th and 17th centuries, at one time the property of Sully, at Villebon. St Lubin-des-Joncherets has a handsome church of the 11th century, in which there are stained-glass windows dating from the 16th century.
EUREKA, a city, port of entry, and the county seat of Humboldt county, California, U.S.A., on the E. shore of Humboldt Bay. Pop. (1880) 2639; (1890) 4858; (1900) 7327 (2035 foreign-born); (1910) 11,845. It has a good harbour, greatly improved by the National government, and is connected with San Francisco, Portland and other coast ports by steamship lines. In 1909 a railway (the Northwestern Pacific), to connect Eureka with San Francisco, was under construction. The district owes its reputation as a health resort to its equable climate and to the protection afforded by the wide coast timber belt. Eureka is the principal point for the shipment of redwood lumber, and saw milling is carried on here on an enormous scale. Several short railways run from Eureka and Arcata (pop. in 1900, 952) across the bay, into the forests, and bring lumber to the mills, most of which are in or near Eureka. Humboldt county was organized in 1853. Eureka was then already the centre of an important lumber trade, principally in spars. It was incorporated in 1856, displacing Union (now Arcata) as the county-seat in the same year.
EUREKA SPRINGS, a city and health resort, one of the county-seats—Berryville being the other—of Carroll county, in the extreme north-western part of Arkansas, U.S.A., in the Ozark uplift, 1800 ft. above the sea-level. Pop. (1890) 3706; (1900) 3572 (142 of negro descent); (1910) 3228. There is a transient population of thousands of visitors during the year. The city is built picturesquely on the sides of a gulch, down which runs the Missouri & North Arkansas railway. A creek running through the city empties into the White river, only a few miles distant. The surrounding country varies in character from mountains to rolling prairie. The encircling hills are laden with a covering of pine. The normal mean temperature for the year is about 59° F. (42° F. in winter, 61° F. in spring, 75° F. in summer, and 58° F. in autumn); the average rainfall, about 33 in. The atmosphere is dry and clear. Apart from its share in the agricultural interests of the surrounding region,—devoted mainly to Indian corn, small grains and fruits,—the entire economy of Eureka Springs centres in its medicinal springs, more than forty of which, lying within the corporate limits, are held in trust by the city for the free use of the public. The temperature of the springs varies from about 57° F. to 64° F. Each gallon of their waters contains about 28.5 cub. in. of gaseous matter and from 6 to 9 grains of solids held in solution. The city waterworks are owned by the municipality. The springs have been exploited since 1879, when the first settlement was made. The city was chartered in 1880.
EURIPIDES (480–406 B.C.), the great Greek dramatic poet, was born in 480 B.C., on the very day, according to the legend, of the Greek victory at Salamis, where his Athenian parents had taken refuge; and a whimsical fancy has even suggested that his name—son of Euripus—was meant to commemorate the first check of the Persian fleet at Artemisium. His father Mnesarchus was at least able to give him a liberal education; it was a favourite taunt with the comic poets that his mother Clito had been a herb-seller—a quaint instance of the tone which public satire could then adopt with plausible effect. At first he was intended, we are told, for the profession of an athlete,—a calling of which he has recorded his opinion with something like the courage of Xenophanes. He seems also to have essayed painting; but at five-and-twenty he brought out his first play, the Peliades, and thenceforth he was a tragic poet. At thirty-nine he gained the first prize, and in his career of about fifty years he gained it only five times in all. This fact is perfectly consistent with his unquestionably great and growing popularity in his own day. Throughout life he had to compete with Sophocles, and with other poets who represented tragedy of the type consecrated by tradition. The hostile criticism of Aristophanes was witty; and, moreover, it was true, granting the premise from which Aristophanes starts, that the tragedy of Aeschylus and Sophocles is the only right model. Its unfairness, often extreme, consists in ignoring the changing conditions of public feeling and taste, and the possibilities, changed accordingly, of an art which could exist only by continuing to please large audiences. It has usually been supposed that the unsparing derision of the comic poets contributed not a little to make the life of Euripides at Athens uncomfortable; and there is certainly one passage in a fragment of the Melanippe (Nauck, Frag., 495), which would apply well enough to his persecutors:—
ἀνδρῶν δὲ πολλοὶ τοῦ γέλωτος οὕνεκα
ἀσκοῦσι χάριτας κερτόμους ἐγὼ δέ πως
μισῶ γελοίους, οἵτινες σοφῶν πέρι
ἀχάλιν᾽ ἔχουσι στόματα.
(To raise vain laughter, many exercise
The arts of satire; but my spirit loathes
These mockers whose unbridled mockery
Invades grave themes.)
The infidelity of two wives in succession is alleged to explain the poet’s tone in reference to the majority of their sex, and to complete the picture of an uneasy private life. He appears to have been repelled by the Athenian democracy, as it tended to become less the rule of the people than of the mob. Thoroughly the son of his day in intellectual matters, he shrank from the coarser aspects of its political and social life. His best word is for the small farmer (αὐτουργός), who does not often come to town, or soil his rustic honesty by contact with the crowd of the market-place.
