ASPHALT, a mineral pitch of a black or brownish-black colour, consisting chiefly of carbon; also a limestone impregnated with bitumen, and more or less in every quarter of the globe.

ASPHALTIC LAKE, the DEAD SEA (q. v.), so called from the asphalt on its surface and banks.

AS'PHODEL, a lily plant appraised by the Greeks for its almost perennial flowering, and with which they, in their imagination, covered the Elysian fields, called hence the Asphodel Meadow.

ASPHYX'IA, suspended respiration in the physical life; a term frequently employed by Carlyle to denote a much more recondite, but a no less real, corresponding phenomenon in the spiritual life.

ASPINWALL, a town founded by an American of the name in 1800, at the Atlantic extremity of the Panama railway; named Colon, since the Empress Eugenie presented it with a statue of Columbus.

ASPROMON'TE, a mountain close by Reggio, overlooking the Strait of Messina, near which Garibaldi was defeated and captured in 1862.

ASQUINI, COUNT, a rural economist who did much to promote silk culture in Italy (1726-1818).

a.s.sAB BAY, a coaling-station belonging to Italy, on the W. coast of the Red Sea.

a.s.sAM' (5,500), a province E. of Bengal, ceded to Britain after the Burmese war in 1826; being an alluvial plain, with ranges of hills along the Brahmapootra, 450 m. long and 50 broad; the low lands extremely fertile and productive, and the hills covered with tea plantations, yielding at one time, if not still, three-fourths of the tea raised in India.

a.s.sAROTTI, an Italian philanthropist, born at Genoa; the first to open a school for deaf-mutes in Italy, and devoted zealously his fortune and time to the task (1753-1821).

AS'SAS, NICOLAS, captain of the French regiment of Auvergne, whose celebrity depends on a single act of defiance: having entered a wood to reconnoitre it the night before the battle of Kloster Kampen, was suddenly surrounded by the enemy's (the English) soldiers, and defied with bayonets at his breast to utter a cry of alarm; "Ho, Auvergne!" he exclaimed, and fell dead on the instant, pierced with bayonets, to the saving of his countrymen.

a.s.sa.s.sINS, a fanatical Moslem sect organised in the 11th century, at the time of the Crusades, under a chief called the Old Man of the Mountain, whose stronghold was a rock fortress at Alamut, in Persia, devoted to the a.s.sa.s.sination of all enemies of the Moslem faith, and so called because they braced their nerves for their deeds of blood by draughts of an intoxicating liquor distilled from hashish (the hemp-plant). A Tartar force burst upon the horde in their stronghold in 1256, and put them wholesale to the sword.

a.s.sAYE', a small town 46 m. NE. of Aurungabad, where Sir Arthur Wellesley gained a victory over the Mahrattas in 1803.

a.s.sEGAI, a spear or javelin of wood tipped with iron, used by certain S. African tribes with deadly effect in war.

a.s.sEMBLY, GENERAL, the chief court of the Presbyterian Church, a representative body, half clergymen and half laymen, which sits in Edinburgh for ten days in May, disposes of the general business of the Church, and determines appeals.

a.s.sEMBLY, NATIONAL, the Commons section of the States-General of France which met on May 5, 1789, const.i.tuted itself into a legislative a.s.sembly, and gave a new const.i.tution to the country.

a.s.sEMBLY, WESTMINSTER, a body composed of 140 members, of which 117 were clergymen, convened at Westminster to determine questions of doctrine, worship, and discipline in the National Church, and which held its sittings, over 1100 of them, from July 1, 1643, to Feb. 22, 1649, with the result that the members of it were unanimous in regard to doctrine, but were divided in the matter of government.

a.s.sEMANI, GIUSEPPE, a learned Syrian Maronite, librarian of the Vatican, wrote an account of Syrian writers (1687-1768); STEPHANO, nephew, held the same office, wrote "Acta Sanctorum Martyrum"

(1707-1782).

a.s.sER, JOHN, monk of St. David's, in Wales, tutor, friend, and biographer of Alfred the Great; is said to have suggested the founding of Oxford University; _d_. 909.

a.s.sIEN'TO, a treaty with Spain to supply negroes for her colonies, concluded in succession with the Flemings, the Genoese, a French company, the English, and finally the South Sea Company, who relinquished their rights in 1750 on compensation by Spain.

AS'SIGNATS, bills or notes, to the number of 45 thousand million, issued as currency by the revolutionary government of France in 1790, and based on the security of Church and other lands appropriated by it, and which in course of time sunk in value, to the ruin of millions.

a.s.sINIBOI'A, a province in Canada between Saskatchewan and the United States.

a.s.sINIBOINES, certain aborigines of Canada; the few of whom that remain do farming on the banks of the Saskatchewan.

a.s.sI'SI (3), a town in Central Italy, 12 m. SE. of Perugia, the birthplace and burial-place of St. Francis, and the birthplace of Metastasio; it was a celebrated place of resort of pilgrims, who sometimes came in great numbers.

a.s.sOCIATION OF IDEAS, a connection in the mind between two ideas, such that the consciousness of one tends to recall the other, a fact employed to explain certain recondite psychological phenomena.

a.s.sOUAN', the ancient Syene, the southernmost city of Egypt, on the right bank of the Nile, near the last cataract.

a.s.sOUCY, D', a French burlesque poet ridiculed by Boileau (1604-1679).

a.s.sUMPTION, FEAST OF THE, festival in honour of the translation of the Virgin Mary to heaven, celebrated on the 15th of August, the alleged day of the event.

a.s.sUR, mythical name of the founder of a.s.syria.

a.s.sYR'IA, an ancient kingdom, the origin and early history of which is uncertain, between the Niphates Mountains of Armenia on the N. and Babylonia on the S., 280 m. long and 150 broad, with a fertile soil and a population at a high stage of civilisation; became a province of Media, which lay to the E., in 606 B.C., and afterwards a satrapy of the Persian empire, and has been under the Turks since 1638, in whose hands it is now a desert.

a.s.sYRIOLOGY, the study of the monuments of a.s.syria, chiefly in a Biblical interest.

ASTAR'TE, or ASHTORETH, or IST'AR, the female divinity of the Phoenicians, as Baal was the male, these two being representative respectively of the conceptive and generative powers of nature, and symbolised, the latter, like Apollo, by the sun, and the former, like Artemis or Diana, by the moon; sometimes identified with Urania and sometimes with Venus; the rites connected with her worship were of a lascivious nature.

ASTER, of Amphipolis, an archer who offered his services to Philip of Macedon, boasting of his skill in bringing down birds on the wing, and to whom Philip had replied he would accept them when he made war on the birds. Aster, to be revenged, sped an arrow from the wall of a town Philip was besieging, inscribed, "To the right eye of Philip," which took effect; whereupon Philip sped back another with the words, "When Philip takes the town, Aster will hang for it," and he was true to his word.