council at Lahore. After passing the summer of 1863 in the cool retreat of Peterhoff, Lord Elgin began a march across the hills from Simla to Sealkote by the upper valleys of the Beas, the Ravee, and the Chenab, chiefly to decide the two allied questions of tea cultiva- tion and trade routes to Kashgaria and Tibet. The climbing up to the Rotung Pass (13,000 feet) which separates the Beas valley from that of the Chenab, and the crossing of the frail twig bridge across the Chundra torrent, prostrated him by the time he had descended into the smiling English-like Kangra valley. Thence he wrote his last letter to Sir Charles Wood, still full of hope and not free from anxiety as to the Sittana expedition. At the lovely hill station of Dhurmsala, “the place of piety,” he lay on his deathbed, watching the glories of the Himalayan autumn, and even directing Lady Elgin where to select his grave in the little cemetery around the station church, which hangs high on the bluff above the house where he breathed his last. After telegraphing his resignation to the Queen, he lay for a fortnight amid sacred words and holy thoughts, tended by loving and skilful hands, and suddenly gave up the fight with agony on the 20th November 1863. He died of fatty degeneration of the muscular fibre of the heart. He is the second governor-general whose body has a resting- place in India, Lord Cornwallis having found a grave at Ghazeepore, during his second administration. It is vain to speculate what Lord Elgin might have been had he lived to apply the experience gathered during his eventful apprenticeship to Indian administration. Sir John (now Lord) Lawrence, the great Bengal civilian, took up his task. Lord Elgin will be best remembered as the quietly
successful governor-general of Canada for eight years.
For his whole career see Letters and Journals of James, Eighth Earl of Elgin (John Murray), edited by Walrond, but corrected by his brother-in-law, Dean Stanley; for the China missions see Narrative of the Earl of Elgin’s Mission to China and Japan, by Laurence Oliphant, his private secretary; for the brief Indian administration see the Friend Of India for 1862-63.
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EL-GOLEA, a town on the southern frontiers of Algeria, in that part of the Sahara which bears the name of El-erg, about 160 miles S.W. of Wargla, in 30° 35′ N. lat. and 3° 10′ E. lon. It consists of three portions—the citadel on a limestone hill, the upper town, and the lower town, each separated from the others by irregular plantations of date trees. In itself it is of no particular interest, but its position makes it a very important station for the caravan trade between Algeria and the countries to the south. It was originally a settlement of the Zenâta Berbers, by whom it was known as Taorert; and there is still a considerable Berber element in its population, though the Arabic language is in general use. The full Arab name is El Golea’a el Menia’a, or the “little fortress well defended.” According to the statement of the natives, the well in the upper town is about 60 feet deep.
ELI (1 Sam. chaps. i.—iv.) was priest of Jehovah at the temple of Shiloh, the sanctuary of the ark, and at the same time judge over Israel—an unusual combination of offices, which must have been won by signal services to the nation in his earlier years, though in the history preserved to us he appears in the weakness of extreme old age, unable to control the petulance and rapacity of his sons, Hophni and Phinehas, which disgraced the sanctuary and disgusted the people. While the central authority was thus weakened, the Philistines advanced against Israel, and gained a complete victory in the great battle of Ebenezer, where the ark was taken, and Hophni and Phinehas slain. On hearing the news, Eli fell from his seat and died. According to the Massoretic text, he was ninety-eight years old, and had judged Israel for forty years (1 Sam. iv. 15, 18). The Septuagint translator gives but twenty years in ver. 18, and seems not to have read ver. 15 [Wellhausen in loco]. After these events the sanctuary of Shiloh appears to have been destroyed by the Philistines [comp. Jer. vii.; Ewald, Geschichte, ii. 584; Wellhausen on 2 Sam. viii. 17], and the descendants of Eli with the whole of their clan or “father’s house” subsequently appear as settled at Nob (1 Sam. xxi. 1, xxii. 11 sqq., comp. xiv. 3). In the massacre of the clan by Saul, with the subsequent deposition of the survivor Abiathar from the priestly office (1 Kings ii. 27), the prophecies of judgment uttered in the days of Eli against his corrupt house were strikingly fulfilled (1 Sam. ii. 27 sqq., iii. 11 sqq.).[1]
An important point of Hebrew archaeology is involved in the genealogy of Eli and his house. It appears from 1 Kings ii. 27—35 that Zadok, from whom the later high priests claimed descent, and who appears in 1 Chron. v 38 (E. V. vi. 12) as the lineal descendant of Aaron through Eleazar and Phinehas, was not of the house of Eli, and in 1 Chron. xxiv. Ahimelech, son of Abiathar, is reckoned to the sons of Ithamar, the younger branch of the house of Aaron. Hence the traditional view that in the person of Eli the high-priesthood was temporarily diverted from the line of Eleazar and Phinehas into that of Ithamar [comp. Joseph. Ant. c. 11, § 5, v. viii. c. 1, § 3, and for the fancies of the Rabbins on the cause of this diversion, Selden, De Succ. in Pontif., lib. i. cap. 2]. This view, however, seems to be absolutely inconsistent with 1 Sam. ii., which represents Eli’s “father’s house” or clan as the original priestly family, and predicts the destruction or degradation to an inferior position of the whole of this “father’s house,” and not merely of the direct descendants of Eli. Moreover, Ahimelech, who is the only link to connect Eli with Ithamar, is an ambiguous personage, who, perhaps, owes his existence to a corruption in the text of 2 Sam. viii. 17 [comp. Wellhausen in loco; Graf, Geschichtliche Bücher, p. 237], where most recent critics read, and the history seems to require, “Abiathar son of Ahimelech” [comp. however, Bertheau on 1 Chron. xviii. 16, and Keil on 1 Chron. v.]. To build an elaborate theory on the genealogical statements in Chronicles is the less justifiable because that book wholly ignores the priesthood of Eli, while Hebrew genealogies must sometimes be understood in a figurative sense. Compare further on the whole sub- ject, Thenius and Wellhausen, on 1 Sam. ii.; Ewald's Geschichte, ii. p. 576 sqq.; Graf, “Zur Geschichte des Stammes Levi” in Merx’s Archie, i. pp. 79, 88, and among older writers especially Selden, in his book already cited, De Successione in Pontificatum.
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most distinguished Hebrew scholar of his time, was born at Neustadt, on the Aisch, in Bavaria, in 1472. From the fact that he spent most of his life in Italy, some have supposed him to have been an Italian by birth. There can be no doubt, however, that he was a German, as he asserts the fact in the preface to one of his works, and his pupil Münster states expressly that he was born at Neustadt of Jewish parents. His father, Rabbi Ascher Levita, assumed the surname of Aschkenasi (the German), which was also used by the son. Banished as a Jew from his native country, Elias went to Italy in the beginning of the 16th century. He resided at first in Venice, where he earned a high reputation as a teacher of Hebrew. In 1504 he removed to Padua, where he continued his career as a teacher, and wrote a commentary on the Hebrew grammar of Rabbi Kimchi. When Padua was sacked in 1509 he lost all his property, and removed to Venice. About 1512 he took up
his residence in Rome, where he enjoyed for a number of
- ↑ A curious Jewish tradition makes Phinehas the man of God who denounced judgment on Eli. Jerome, Quaest. Heb. in Lib. I. Regum.
