of the principal various readings, containing an ingenious conjecture as to the original reading in chap. ii. 18. Attention is drawn to the fact that the epistles to the Ephesians and the Colossians, alone among the Pauline epistles, are exposed to those “harmonizing tendencies” in transcribers which have had such an influence on the text of the gospels. Professor Lightfoot deals, also, in a most exhaustive manner, with the subject of the apocryphal letter to the Laodiceans (connected with Col. iv. 16), which appears in a considerable number of MSS. of the New Testament, and shows it to be “a cento of Pauline phrases strung together without any definite connection or any clear object.” Paley, in his Horæ Paulinæ, has a very satisfactory section on the similarity of the epistles to the Ephesians and the Colossians. On the character of the heretical tendencies in Asia Minor the general reader will find all requisite information in Neander, History of the Planting, &c., of Christianity, and Pressensé, Histoire des Trois Premiers Siècles de l'Église Chrétienne. Mansel, in his Gnostic Heresies, has a chapter devoted to Notices of Gnosticism in the New Testament. Both Neander and Pressensé draw attention to the arbitrary and unsound theorizing of the Tübingen school in respect to the group
to which the epistle to the Colossians belongs.COLOSSUS, in antiquity, a term applied generally to statues of great size, and in particular to the bronze statue of Helios, in Rhodes, which for its size came to be reckoned among the wonders of the world. It was made from the spoils left by Demetrius Poliorcetes when he raised the prolonged siege of Pvhodes. The sculptor was Chares, a native of Lindus, and of the school of Lysippus, under whose influence the art of sculpture was led to the pro duction of colossal figures by preference. The work occupied him twelve years, it is said, and the finished statue stood 70 cubits high. It stood near the harbour (eirl Ai /xevt), but at what point is not certain. When, and from what grounds, the belief arose that it had stood across the entrance to the harbour, with a beacon light in its hand and ships passing between its legs, is not known, but the belief was current as early as the IGth century. M. Benndorf has recently endeavoured to trace it to a mistaken reading of a Greek epigram on the Colossus, and his con jecture seems probable (Mittheilungen des deutschen Instituts in Athen, part 1, p. 45). The statue was thrown down by an earthquake about the year 224 B.C., that is about 56 years after its erection. Then, after lying broken for nearly 1000 years, it is said, the pieces were bought by a Jew, and probably reconverted into instruments of war.
COLSTON, Edward (1639-1721), was the spn of William Colston, a Bristol merchant of good position. He is generally understood to have spent some years of his youth and manhood as a factor in Spain, with which country his family was long connected commercially, and whence, by means of a trade in wines and oil, great part of his own vast fortune was to come. On his return he seems to have settled in London, and to have bent himself resolutely to the task of making money. In 1681, the date of his father s decease, he appears as a governor of Christ s Hospital, to which noble foundation he afterwards gave frequently and largely. In the same year be probably began to take an active interest in the affairs of Bristol, where he is found about this time embarked in a sugar refinery ; and during tho remainder of his life he seems to have divided his attention pretty equally between the city of his birth and that of his adoption. In 1682 he appears in the records of the great western port as advancing a sum of 1800 to its needy corporation; in 1683 as "a free burgess and metre (St Kitts) merchant" he was made a member of the Merchant s Hall; and in 1684 he was appointed one of a committee for managing the affairs of Clifton. In 1 685 he again appears as the city s creditor for about 2uOO, repayment of which he is found insisting on in 1686. In 1 689 he was chosen auditor by the Vestry at Mortlake, where he was residing in an old house once the abode of Iieton and Cromwell. In 1691, on St Michael s Hill, Bristol, at a cost of 8000, he founded an almshouse for the recep tion of 24 poor men and women, and endowed with accom modation for " Six Saylors," at a cost of 600, the Merchant s Almshouses in King Street. In 1C96, at a cost of 8000, he endowed a foundation for clothing and teaching 40 boys (the books employed were to have in thtm " no tincture of Whiggism ") ; and six years afterwards he expended a further sum of 1500 in rebuilding the school- house. In 1708, at a cost of 41,200, he built and endowed his great foundation on Saint Augustine s Back, for the instruction, clothing, maintaining, and apprenticing of 100 boys; and in time of scarcity, during this and next year, he transmitted " by a private hand " some 20,000 to the London committee. In 1710, after a poll of four days, he was sent to Parliament, to represent, on strictest Tory principles, his native city of Bristol; and in 1713, after three years of silent political life, he resigned this charge. He died in 1721, having nearly completed his eighty-fifth year ; his remains were conveyed, with all the funereal magnificence his own solemn fastidiousness could suggest, from his house at Mortlake to Bristol, where he was buried in All Saints Church. Colston, who was in the habit of bestowing large sums yearly for the release of poor debtors and the relief of indigent age and sickness, and who gave (1711) no less than 6000 to increase Queen Anne s Bounty Fund for the augmentation of small livings, was always keenly interested in the organization and management of his foundations ; the rules and regulations were all drawn up by his hand, and the minutest details of their constitution and economy were dictated by him. A high churchman and Tory, with a genuine intolerance of dissent and dissenters, his name and example have served as excuses for the formation of several politic benevolent societies the "Anchor," the " Dolphin," the " Grateful," whose rivalry has been perhaps as instrumental in keeping their patron s memory green as have the splendid charities with which he enriched his native city. See Garrard, Edward Colston, the Philanthropist, 4 to, Bristol, 1852 ; and Pryce, A Popular History of Bristol, 1861.
possessed a manufactory of silks and woollens. At ten years old he left school for the factory, and at fourteen he made a runaway voyage to India, during which he made a wooden model, yet existing, of what was afterwards to be the revolver. On his return he learned chemistry from his father s bleaching and dyeing manager, and travelled over the United States and Canada lecturing on that science. The profits of two years of this work enabled him to continue his researches and experiments. In 1835 he visited Europe, and patented his inventions in London and Paris, securing the American right on his return; and the same year he founded the Patent Arms Company, for the manufacture of his revolvers only. The scheme did not succeed; some use was indeed made of the arms, but they were not generally appreciated ; and in 1842 the company became insolvent. No revolvers were made for five years; and none were to be had when Taylor sent from Mexico for a supply. The Government ordered 1000 from the inventor; but before these could be produced he had to construct a new model, for a pistol of the company s make could no where be found. This commission was the beginning of an immense success. The little armoury at Whitney vi lie
(New Haven, Connecticut), where the order for Mexico
