E M B E M B 159 against the inroads of the sea. Embankments are also the main features in almost all schemes of water-works, being used for impounding water for supply of towns or com pensation to mills. See IRRIGATION and WATER- WORKS. EMBER DAYS AND EMBER WEEKS, the four seasons set apart by the Western Church for special prayer and fasting, and the ordination of clergy, known in the mediaeval church as qnatuor tempora, or jejunia quatuor tempcrum. The Ember weeks are the complete weeks next following Holy Cross Day (September 14), St Lucy s Day (December 13), the first Sunday in Lent, and Whitsun Day. The Wednesdays, Fridays, and Saturdays of these weeks are the Ember days distinctively, the following Sundays being the days of ordination. These dates are given in the following memorial distich with a frank in- O -~J difference to quantity and metre Vult Crux, Lucia, Cinis, Charismata dia Quod det vota pia quarta sequens feria. The word Ember is of uncertain derivation. We may at once dismiss, as founded only on an accidental similarity of sound, that from the " embers " or ashes erroneously assumed to have been used at these seasons in token of humiliation. Other more probable derivations are from the Anglo-Saxon ymb-ren, a circuit or revolution (from ymb, around, and rennen, to run) ; or by process of agglu tination and phonetic decay, from the Latin quatuor tempora. Those who advocate this latter derivation appeal to the analogous forms by which these seasons are desig nated in some of the Teutonic languages, e.g. German, quatember ; Dutch, quatertemper ; Danish, kvatember ; Swedish, tamper-dagar. But the occurrence of the Anglo- Saxon compounds ymbren-tid, ymbren-iuucan, ymbren-faes- tan, ymbren-dagas, for Ember tide, weeks, fasts, days, favours the former derivation, which is also confirmed by the use of the word imbren in the Acts of the council of /Enham, 1009 A.D. ("jejunia quatuor tempora quaa imbren vocant "). It corresponds also with Pope Leo the Great s definition, "jejunia ecclesiastica per totius anni circulum distributa." The observance of the Ember days is confined to the Western Church, and had its origin as an ecclesiastical ordinance in Rome. They were probably at first merely the fasts preparatory to the three great festivals of Christmas, Easter, and Pentecost. A fourth was subse quently added, for the sake of symmetry, to make them correspond with the four seasons, and they became known as the jejunium vernum, a : sitvum, autumnale, and hiemale, BO that, to quote Pope Leo s words, " the law of abstinence might apply to every season of the year," An earlier men tion of these fasts, as four in number the first known is in the writings of Philastrms, bishop of Brescia, in the middle of the 4th century. He also connects them with the great Christian festivals (De Hares. , 119). In Leo s time, 440-461 A.D., Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday were already the days of special observance. From Rome the Ember days gradually spread through the whole of Western Christendom. Uniformity of practice, however, in this particular was of somewhat slow growth. Neither in Gaul nor Spain do they seem to have been generally recognized much before the 8th century. Their introduction into Britain appears to have been earlier, dating from Augustine, r >97 A.D., acting under the authority of Gregory the Great. The general period of the four fasts being roughly fixed, the precise date appears to have varied considerably, and in some cases to have lost its connection with the festivals altogether. The Ordo Romanns fixes the spring fast in the first week of March (then the first month) ; the summer fast in the second week of June ; the autumnal fast in the third week of September ; and the winter fast in tli3 com plete week next before Christmas eve. Other regulations pre vailed in different countries, until the inconveniences arising from the want of uniformity led to the rule now observed being laid down under Pope Urban II. as the law of tho church, in the councils of Placentia and Clermont, 1095 A.D. The present rule which fixes the ordination of clergy in the Ember weeks cannot be traced further back than the time of Pope Gelasius, 492-496 A.D. In the early ages of the church ordinations took place at any season of the year whenever necessity required. Gelasius is stated by ritual writers to have been the first who limited them to these particular times, the special solemnity of the season being in all probability the cause of the selection. The rule once introduced commended itself to the mind of the church, and its observance spread. We find it laid down in the pontificate of Archbishop Egbert of York, 732-766 A.D., and referred to as a canonical rule in a capitulary of Charles the Great, and it was finally established as a law of the church in the pontificate of Gregory VII., c. 1085. Authorities : Muratori, Dissert, de Jejun. Quat.. Temp., c. vii., anecdot. torn. ii. p. 262; Bingham, Antiq. of the Christ. Church, bk. iv. chap. vi. 6, bk. xxi. chap. ii. 1-7; Binterim, Denkwiir- dujl-eiten, vol. v. part 2, pp. 133 /.; August!, Handbuch der Christlich. Archdol., vol. i. p. 465, iii. 486. (E. V.) EMBEZZLEMENT, in English law, is a peculiar form of theft which is distinguished from the ordinary crime in two points : (1) It is committed by a person who is in the position of clerk or servant to the owner of the property stolen ; and (2) the property when stolen is in the posses sion of such clerk or servant. The definition of embezzle ment as a special form of theft arose out of the difficulties caused by the legal doctrine that to constitute larceny the property must be taken out of the possession of the owner. Servants and others were thus able to steal with impunity goods intrusted to them by their masters. The statute 21 Henry VIII. c. 7 was passed to meet this case ; and it enacted that it should be felony in servants to convert to their own use caskets, jewels, money, goods, or chattels delivered to them by their masters. " This Act, " says Sir J. F. Stephen (General Vieiv of the Criminal Law of England), " assisted by certain subtleties according to which the posses sion of the servant was taken under particular circumstances to be the possession of the master, so that the servant by converting the goods to his own use took them out of his own possession qua servant (which was his master s posses sion) and put them into his own possession qua thief (which was a felony), was considered sufficient for practical pur poses for more than 200 years." In 1799, a clerk who had converted to his own use a cheque paid across the counter to him by a customer of his master was held to be not guilty of felony ; and in the same year the Act 39 Geo. III. c. 85 was passed, which, meeting the difficulty in such cases, enacted that if any clerk or servant, or any person employed as clerk or servant, should, by virtue of such em ployment, receive or take into his possession any money, bonds, bills, &c., for or in the name or on account of his employers, and should fraudulently embezzle the same, every such offender should be deemed to have stolen the same. The same definition is substantially repeated in a Consolida tion Act passed in 1827 (7 and 8 Geo. IV. c. 29). Numberless difficulties of interpretation arose under these Acts, e.g., as to the meaning of " clerk or servant," as to the difference between theft and embezzlement, &c. The law now in force, or the Larceny Act, 24 and 25 Viet. c. 96, defines the offence thus (section 68) : " Whosoever, being a clerk or servant, or being employed for the purpose or in the capacity of a clerk or servant, shall fraudulently embezzle any chattel, money, or valuable security which shall be delivered to or received or taken into possession by him for or in the name or on the account of his master
or employer, or any part thereof, shall be deemed to have