ancient chemists were in search of the art of making gold; and being excited by this powerful motive, and confident of success, they spared no trouble or expense to accomplish this design. They undertook, without hesitation, operations which required great length of time, and unremitted heat. Whereas now, these alluring hopes having vanished, the cultivators of chemistry have no other view than to extend and perfect the theory of this essential part of natural philosophy. This motive, although undoubtedly much nobler than the former, seems, however, to be less powerful over most men. For now, all long and laborious operations, whence chemistry might receive great advantages, are neglected, as being tiresome and disgustful. There is, in fact, a considerable difference betwixt the hope of explaining a philosophical phenomenon, and that of obtaining an ingot of gold capable of producing many others. Hence the instruments employed in long operations, and particularly the athanor, are now much neglected; and also, because the fuel in the tower is apt to stick there, or fall down at once in too great quantity. The lamp furnace, which is a true athanor, may be successfully employed in operations which do not require much heat. ATHAPESCOW, a lake in the north-west of North America, and fifty-ninth degree of north latitude, so called from a tribe of Indians inhabiting its banks. It is contiguous to the Lake of the Hills, and has now become so shallow, that, according to Mackenzie, it will in time be probably converted into a swamp. ATHARER, in astrology, a term used when the moon is in the same degree and minute with the sun. ATHBOY, a town of Ireland, in the county of Meath, situated on a stream of the same name. It was a borough, which returned members to the Irish parliament before the union. Three fairs are held here annually. Distant twenty nine miles north-west of Dublin. ATHEE, a town of France, in Anjou, with 260 houses, belonging to the arrondissement of Chateau-Gontier, in the department of Mayenne. It lies on the river Oudon, five leagues S. S. W. of Laval. ATHEE, a town of France, in the department of the Indre and Loire, arrondissement of Tours, on the left bank of the Cher, with 255 houses, three leagues south-west of Amboise. ATHEISM, A'THEIST, n. & adj. ATHEIST'ICAL, ATHEIST'ICALLY, ATHEIST ICALNESS, ATHEIST'ICK, A'THEIZE, A'THEOUS. A, privative, Otoç, God; without God. One of its significations is illustrated by the following citation (from St. Paul's Epistle to the Ephesians, A Oεo EVT KOOP, without God in the world. God never wrought miracles to convince atheism, Bacon. because his ordinary works convince it. Nor stood unmindful Abdiel, to annoy Thy Father, who is holy, wise, and pure, To tread his sacred courts. Paradise Regained. Men are atheistical, because they are first vicious; and question the truth of Christianity, because they note the practice. South. I entreat such as are atheistically inclined, to consider these things. Tillotson. It is the common interest of mankind, to punish all those who would seduce men to atheism. Id. Atheist, use thine eyes; And, having view'd the order of the skies, Creech. Ray on the Creation. 'Chester, civilized as well as Wales, has demonstrated, that freedom and not servitude is the cure of anarchy; as religion, not atheism, is the true remedy for superstition. Burke. ATHEISM, absurd and unreasonable as it is, has had its votaries and martyrs. In the seventeenth century, Spinosa, a foreigner, was its noted defender. Lucilio Vanini, an Italian, a native of Naples, publicly taught atheism in France, about the beginning of the seventeenth century; and being convicted of it at Toulouse, was condemned and executed. An ATHEIST may be defined, a person who does not believe in any thing superior to the material world. Many people both ancient and modern, have pretended to be, or have been reckoned, atheists; but it is justly questioned whether any man ever seriously adopted such a principle. These pretensions, are often, indeed, founded on pride and affectation. Such motives, together with an honest indignation against the impositions and intolerance of superstition and priestcraft (which had so often deluged France with blood), seem to have co-operated to produce that extraordinary moral phenomenon, exhibited in the French Convention, of several of the leading members openly avowing themselves atheists; in consequence of which the whole nation was absurdly branded with atheism. Cicero, however, represents it as a probable opinion, that they, who apply themselves to philosophy, believe there are no gods. This must doubtless be meant of the academic philosophy, to which Cicero himself was attached, and which taught to doubt of every thing. On the contrary, the Newtonian philosophers, continually recur to a Deity, whom they always find at the head of their chain of natural causes. Among the modern philosophers, who have been the principal advocates for the existence of a Deity, are Sir Isaac Newton, Boyle, Cheyne, Nieuwentyt, &c. To which may be added many others, who, though of the clergy, yet have distinguished themselves by their philosophical pieces in behalf of the existence of a God; e. g Derham, Bentley, Whiston, Ray, Samuel and John Clarke, Fenelon, &c. So true is that saying of Lord Bacon, that though a smattering of reason, than to ascribe the production of men to the first fruitfulness of the earth, without so much as one instance and experiment, in any age of history, to countenance so monstrous a supposition? The thing is, at first sight, so gross and palpable, that no discourse about it can be more apparent. And yet, these shameful beggars of principles give this precarious account of the original of things; assume to themselves to be the men of reason, the great wits of the world, the only cautious and wary persons that hate to be imposed upon, that must have convincing evidence for every thing, and can admit of nothing without a clear demonstration for it.' ATHELING, ADELING, EDLING, ETHLING. or ETHELING; from æthel, noble, Saxon; a title among the Anglo-Saxons, properly belonging to the heir apparent to the crown. This appellation was first conferred by king Edward the Confessor on Edgar, to whom he was great uncle, when, being without any issue of his own, he intended to make him his heir. See EDGAR. ATHELSTANE, a Saxon king of England, natural son of Edward the Elder, and grandson of the great Alfred. He succeeded in 925, and reigned sixteen years. There was a remarkable law passed by this prince, which shows his just sentiments of the advantages of commerce, as well as the early attention paid to it in this country: viz. that any merchart who made three voyages on his own account beyond the British Channel, should be entitled to the privilege of a thane, or gentleman. philosophy may lead a man into atheism, a deep draught will certainly bring him back again to the belief of a God and Providence; agreeably to what the poet observes of learning in general: A little learning is a dangerous thing: Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring.' Archbishop Tillotson justly observes that speculative atheism is unreasonable on five accounts: 1. Because it gives no tolerable account of the existence of the world: 2. It does not give any reasonable account of the universal consent of mankind in this comprehension, that there is a God: 3. It requires more evidence for things than they are capable of giving: 4. The atheist pretends to know what no man can know: 5. Atheism contradicts itself. Under the first of these he advances the following arguments: I appeal to any man of reason whether any thing ean be more unreasonable than obstinately to impute an effect to chance, which carries in the very face of it all the arguments and characters of a wise design and contrivance. Was ever any ATHELNEY, an island of England, in the considerable work, in which there was required county of Somerset, formed by the junction of a great variety of parts, and a regular and orderly the rivers Tone and Parret, a few miles below disposition of those parts, done by chance? Will Taunton. Alfred took refuge here while the chance fit means to ends, and that in ten country was overrun by the Danes, and is said to thousand instances, and not fail in any one? have built an abbey on the spot. Many antiHow often might a man, after he had jumbled a quities were dug up in 1674 set of letters in a bag, ling them out upon the ground before they would fall into an exact poem; yea, or so much as make a good discourse in prose? And may not a little book be as easily made as the great volume of the world? How long might a man be in sprinkling colors upon canvass with a careless hand, before they would happen to make the exact picture of a man? And is a man easier made by chance than his picture? How long might twenty thousand blind men, who should be sent out from several remote parts of England, wander up and down before they would all meet upon Salisbury plain, and fall into rank and file in the exact order of an army? Yet this is much more easy to be imagined than how the innumerable blind parts of matter should rendezvous themselves into a world. A man that sees Henry the Seventh's chapel at Westminster, might with as good reason maintain (yea, with much better, considering the vast difference betwixt that little structure and the huge fabric of the world) that it was never so contrived or built by any means, but that the stones did by chance grow into those curious figures, into which they seem to have been cut and graven; and that upon a time (as tales usually begin) the materials of that building, the stone, mortar, timber, iron, lead, and glass, happily met together; and very fortunately ranged themselves into that delicate order in which we see them now, so close compacted, that it must be a very great chance that parts them again. What would the world think of a man that should advance such an opinion as this, and write a book for it? If they would do him right, they ought to look upon him as mad, but yet with a little more reason than any man can have to say that the world was made by chance, or that the first men grew out of the earth as plants do now. For can any thing be more ridiculous, and against all ATHELSTANE, king of Northumberland, or, according to Buchanan, a Danish chief, who obtained a grant of that country from king Alfred, flourished about the beginning of the ninth century; and, carrying on a predatory war in Scotland, was killed in battle by Hungus, king of the Picts, at the village since named from him Athelstaneford, near the rivulet called Lugdown Burn, which is said to be a corruption of Rug Down, and to have taken its name from the circumstance of Athelstane being rugged down, or pulled from his horse, in the battle. ATHELSTANEFORD, a village and parish of Scotland, in the county of Haddington. It was the birth-place of Blair, the author of The Grave; and here Mr. Home was settled as parish minister, but was obliged to relinquish the living in consequence of having written the tragedy of Douglas. Distant two miles from Haddington, seventeen from Edinburgh, east. ATHENA, in the ancient physic, a plaster or liniment commended against wounds of the head and nerves, of which we find descriptions giver by Oribasius, Elius, and Ægineta. ATHENEA, a feast of the ancient Greeks held in honor of Minerva, whom they called Ann. They were afterwards called Panathenæa. ATHENÆUM, in antiquity, a public place wherein the professors of the liberal arts held their assemblies, the rhetoricians declaimed, and the poets rehearsed their performances. These places, of which there were a great number at Athens, were built in the manner of amphitheatres, and encompassed with seats called cunei. The three most celebrated Athens were those at Athens, at Rome, and at Lyons; the second of which was built by the emperor Adrian. ATHENÆUS, a Greek grammarian, born at Naucratis in Egypt, in the third century, one of the most learned men of his time. Of all his works we have none extant but his Deipnosophis, i. e. the sophists at table; there is a great fund of facts and quotations in this work, which render it very agreeable to admirers of antiquity, as they are nowhere else to be met with. ATHENÆUS, a mathematician, who wrote a treatise on mechanics, which is inserted in the works of the ancient mathematicians, printed at Paris in 1693, in folio, in Greek and Latin. ATHENAUS, a physician, born in Cilicia, contemporary with Pliny, and founder of the pneumatic sect. He taught that the fire, air, water, and earth, are not the true elements, but that their qualities are, viz. heat, cold, moisture, and dryness; and to these he added a fifth element which he called spirit, whence his sect had their name, Pneumatics. ATHENAGORAS, an Athenian philosopher, who flourished about the middle of the second century; and was equally remarkable for his zeal for Christianity, and his great learning; as appears from the Apology which he addressed to the emperors Aurelius Antoninus and Lucius Commodus; as well as from another work still extant upon the Resurrection. They are both written in a style truly Attic. ATHENATORIUM, among chemists, a thick glass cover placed on a cucurbit, having a slender umbo, or prominent part, which enters like a stopple, within the neck of the cucurbit. ATHENE; AOnvn, Greek; the name given by the Greeks to Minerva. See MINERVA. ATHENIPPUM, in the ancient physic, a collyrium commended against divers diseases of the eyes; thus denominated from its inventor Athenippus. It is described by Scribonius Largus and Gorræus. Galen mentions another athenippum, of a different composition, by which it appears that this was a denomination common to several collyriums. ATHENODORUS, a famous stoic philosopher, born at Tarsus, who went to the court of Augustus, and was made by him tutor to Tiberius. Augustus had a great esteem for him, and found him by experience a man of virtue and probity. He was accustomed to speak very freely to the emperor. Before he left the court to return home, he warned the emperor not to give himself up to anger, but, whenever he should be in a passion to rehearse the twenty-four letters of the alphabet before he resolved to say or do any thing. He did not live to see his bad success in the education of Tiberius. ATHENOPOLIS, a town of the Massilienses, an ancient nation of Gaul, conjectured to be the same with Telo Martius, now Toulon. ATHENRY, a village of Ireland, in the county of Galway, formerly a borough, and a walled town. In the year 1315 a battle was fought near this town between the English and Irish, in which the latter was defeated. In 1599 the Irish put all the inhabitants to the sword. Distant ten miles east of Galway, ninety-one from Dublin. A THEN S. ATHENS, in geography and ancient history, a celebrated kingdom of ancient Greece, the capital of Attica, situated 100 miles N. E. of Lacedæmon and 320 S. by W. of Constantinople. It is at present the chief town of Livadia, a province of the Turkish empire, and is seated in the Gulf of Engia, Lon. 23° 57′ E., lat. 38o 5′ N. ORIGIN AND ANCIENT NAME.-The kingdom of Attica received the name of Ogygia, from Ogyges, commonly placed 1586 years before Christ; but Athens is scarcely mentioned in history till some time after the days of Cecrops, an Egyptian by birth, supposed to be contemporary with Moses, and affirmed by the Greeks to be the first builder of cities. This leader who appears to have either founded or new modelled the Acropolis, or ancient city, under the name of Cecropia, placed himself at the head of it, and introduced from Sais in Egypt, the worship of Neith, adopted by the people under the name of 'Ann. In the early ages of Greece, that which was afterwards called the citadel, was the whole city, and called Polis, or the city,' by way of eminence. ALTERATION OF NAME.-In the reign of Erichthonius it lost the name of Cecropia, and acquired that of Athens, from A0vn, the Greek name of the goddess Minerva, the Neith of the Egyptians already mentioned, who was esteemed its protectress. This old city was seated on the top of a rock in the midst of a large and pleasant plain, which, as the number of inhabitants increased, became full of buildings; which induced the distinction of Acropolis and Catopolis, i. e. of the upper and lower city. The extent of the citadel was sixty stadia; it was surrounded by olive trees, and fortified with a strong palisade; in succeeding times it was encompassed with a strong wall, in which there were one very large and eight small gates. ORIGINAL SUCCESSION AND GOVERNMENT. The successors of Cecrops are but imperfectly known, but, according to the most ancient traditions, they were 1. Amphictyon; 2. Erectheus I. the same as Erichthonius, the place of whose interment is still called Erecthelum. It was this prince who raised an image of Minerva made of olive wood in the Cecropia, and also in honor of the goddess instituted festivals called Athenæa, to be celebrated by the twelve Attic cities. To him succeeded 3. Pandion I. 4. Erectheus II. 5. Egeus. 6. Theseus. The last of whom established the Prytaneum, a court of judicature common to all Attica; also the Panathenæa, |