tection and help, swearing to be true to each other in life, and to avenge any of those that might die by the hand of the lawless.

The sword of William the Norman cut asunder many of these alliances, and undid much of this popular freedom. The mutual oath of the householders at the county assembly was extorted from them periodically by the Conqueror in the Court Leet in support of his own government. The military administration of his barons substituted homage and the oath of fealty throughout the country, and held the down-trodden population in the grasp of a mailed hand. The gradation of the feudal system held all society in bonds by its oaths of fealty and allegiance, the Church consecrating a soldier's sense of honour with the most mysterious sanctions, and coupling unfaithfulness with the unmitigated prospect of shame and ruin and death both in this world and also in that which was to come.

The Tudors succeeded to the throne at a time when the chivalry of feudalism was exhausted. The Stuarts, with as little assistance from it, found themselves face to face with adverse spiritual influences in high places-the Jesuits, the Anglican Ritualists and High Churchmen, the Presbyterians, and the Brownists or Puritans. Here was ample occasion for oaths which the government, sooner than they expected, were forced upon embracing. The Gunpowder Plot simplified the issue for a time; it was now all society, led by the king, against the followers of Loyola. The oath that was to enmesh the slipperiest of casuists was a thing of keenest discussion. At length it was said to have been discovered from some of the Jesuit Fathers themselves that the words "on the true faith of a Christian" added to the oath would act as an irresistible talisman on their consciences. Whether it did is a fact not to be found in any history. Probably the Jesuit escaped the formula; but long after it caught a Jew. The Bull in cœna Domini, levelled at Queen Elizabeth, followed by the Gunpowder Plot against James, gave rise to the oath of supremacy. With the fall of Laud and the occurrence of the civil war rose a succession of oaths, imposed by Presbyterians and Puritans, as the Solemn League and Covenant, the Parliament of England, and at length the Protector successively rose to the surface amidst the din of civil war.

The oath of abjuration contains the history of the Restoration and final overthrow of the Stuarts. The Revolution, in spirit and purpose, came to be manifested to surrounding nations and generations still to come by the rise and continuance of a body and church of Nonjurors, who, although refusing to take the oaths to the new government, were only ousted from state emoluments, but were neither hanged nor imprisoned, nor forbidden to come within five miles of any large town, nor persecuted; they were merely left alone, to live where they pleased, to meet when they pleased, and to enjoy the protection and be neficence of the king's government.

How different was the treatment of the Nonconformists by the first parliament of Charles II., and what a burden of contemptuous distrust, impiously consecrated with the sanctions of an oath and the eucharist, was imposed on these men, and on the generations which followed them down to our own times, by that same parliament in the Test and Corporation Acts!

The three oaths of allegiance, supremacy, and abjuration continued to our own day to be imposed on parliament and on all persons holding public offices. The Stuarts had died out, but were still abjured. The Pope had ceased to be feared, yet the damnable heresy of his supremacy over kings, potentates, &c., was renounced in the name of Heaven.

Roman Catholic Emancipation, in 1829, necessitated a modification of the oath of supremacy, as respects peers and commoners taking their seats in parliament.

The Jews, who had been excluded from corporate offices, and from parliament, by the oath that was framed to catch the Jesuits of James I.'s time, were, in the time of William IV., admitted to corporate offices by a modification of the oath in their favour, but were still excluded from parliament. After much agitation which continued through many years, and after Sir David Salomons had incurred a pramunire by sitting and voting in the House of Commons without having taken the oaths, and Sir Lionel Rothschild had been returned for the city of London to successive parliaments without being able to take his seat, Acts were passed in 1858, the year when Mr. D'Israeli was Chancellor of the Exchequer and leader in the Commons, abrogating the three oaths, and substituting one new oath the oath of allegiance, to be taken by peers and commoners, at the same time leaving either House at liberty to dispense by motion in favour of persons pro

ARTS AND SCI. DIV.-SUP.

OCTYLIC ALCOHOLS.

1618 fessing the Jewish religion with the words "and I make this declaration on the true faith of a Christian "(see 21 & 22 Vict. cc. 48 & 49).

This oath was further simplified by the 29 Vict. c. 19, as it is to be taken by members of parliament. Simpler forms of oaths are substituted for the three oaths to be taken by persons holding offices by the 31 & 32 Vict. c. 72; and in 1872 there is a repeal of obsolete statutes, imposing oaths or providing indemnity for those who had omitted to take the requisite oaths, where the mere mention of their titles occupies thirteen octavo pages closely printed in small type.

The multiplication of oaths in matters of every-day occurrence had grown so as to defeat the object in view by obliterating any sense of sacredness from minds thus hackneyed in the use. It seemed good, therefore, to the parliament of 1835 to pass the 5 & 6 Will. 4, c. 62, an Act for the more effectual abolition of oaths and affirmations taken and made in various departments of the State, and to substitute declarations in lieu thereof, and for the more entire suppression of voluntary and extrajudicial oaths and affidavits. After providing throughout a number of sections for the substitution of a statutory declaration in lieu of an oath under a variety of specified circumstances, it goes on to enact that "whereas it may be necessary and proper in many cases not herein specified to require confirmation of matters, instruments, or allegations, or proof of debts or of the execution of deeds or other matters, it shall and may be lawful for any justice of the peace, notary public, or other officer now by law authorised to administer an oath, to take and receive the declaration of any person voluntarily making the same before him in the form in the schedule to this Act annexed, and if any declaration so made shall be false or untrue in any material particular, the person wilfully making such false declaration shall be deemed guilty of a misdemeanour." The 31 & 32 Vict. c. 72, above referred to, continues this description of legislation into departments of the government and of civil life not hitherto provided for by the former statute.

OCTANE [OCTYLIC ALCOHOLS, E. C. S.]

OCTASTYLE. In architecture, a portico having eight columns in the front is said to be octastyle. [PORTICO; TEMPLE, E. C.]

OCTROI (from Med. Lat. auctorium, a corruption of auctoritas, authority), a tax levied on goods entering a town for sale or local consumption. The octroi seems to have become general during the Middle Ages, it having usually been levied by municipalities under royal authority, mainly as a source of revenue, but partly for protective purposes. On the continent the tax has been commonly retained, though temporarily abolished during popular risings, or in revolutionary periods; but in England it is now nearly unknown, except in the shape of the coal and wine duties levied by the City of London. In Belgium the octroi was abolished in 1860. In France the octroi is limited to articles of food (including wine, vinegar and other potables), firing, and raw materials generally. It is imposed primarily for municipal purposes, but the general government receives one-tenth as its share of the amount raised.

OCTYL, or dioctyl, C6H34 (C32H31). One form of this hydrocarbon has been obtained by the action of sodium amalgam on primary octylic iodide. It crystallizes in nacreous laminæ, which melt at 21°, and boil at 278°.

16 2

OCTYLENE, caprylene, CH16 (C16H16), a hydrocarbon produced by heating secondary octylic alcohol with zincic chloride. It is a mobile oil, lighter than water, and very soluble in alcohol or ether, whose boiling point, as given by different authors, varies from 116° to 125°. It combines directly with bromine, forming octylenic bromide, CH18Br, (C16H18Br2). This is a heavy liquid, which is readily decomposed by argentic acetate, yielding octylenic acetate, a thick oily liquid boiling at 245°. ́ ́Octylenic hydrate, or octylenic glycol, CHO, (CHO, 2 HO) is obtained by decomposing the acetate with potassic hydrate. It is an oily, colourless liquid, possessing a burning aromatic taste. It boils at 235°, and is insoluble in water, but soluble in alcohol and in ether.

18

2

14

OCTYLIC ALCOHOLS, C,H,,O (C18H170, HO). Only a few of the numerous primary, secondary, and tertiary octylic alcohols which are capable of existing, have as yet been prepared and examined.

PRIMARY OCTYLIC ALCOHOL, or Hexyl carbinol, CH,Ho C,H, has been obtained from the volatile oil of the seeds of the cow parsnip, Heracleum Spondylium. It is a colourless, oily liquid, of pungent aromatic odour and burning taste, which boils at 190°,

5 L

under Gregory X., A.D. 1271-6; and A.D. 1278, Pope Nicholas III. sanctioned certain alterations which had been made by Haymo, head of the Franciscan order, and which consisted in curtailing the Psalms and Scripture lessons, and substituting legends of saints. During the Pontificate of Paul III. (A.D. 1534-49), Cardinal Quignon published (1536) a revision of the Breviary, which he had made with the approbation of Clement VII. He left out versicles and responds, and antiphons to the Psalms, and provided that the Psalms should be said once a week, and the Bible read once a year, omitting the greater part of the legends of saints. In his second edition he restored the antiphons to the Psalins, on the strong remonstrance of the doctors of the Sorbonne. This Breviary was superseded by Pius V. A.D. 1568, who, by a bull, abolished Quignon's Breviary and all other Breviaries that could not show a prescription of 200 years. The bull allowed no alteration in the services now appointed, and imposed the newly arranged editions upon all who were bound to say the canonical hours. Subsequent bulls regulated the correctness of editions, and licensing of printers, and Urban VIII. recast the hymns as they now stand according to the rules of metre and quantity. The Breviary of Pius V. is the daily office of the Roman Communion, and has been gradually superseding all other uses. The Gallican uses seem giving way to it; even the Ambrosian Rite at Milan was superseded for a time at least by the present Pope, when he suspended the Archbishop at the beginning of the Piedmontese troubles; and it is doubtful whether the Mozarabic offices are said even in Toledo. Besides these greater offices there were the "Hours of the Holy Spirit," and of "The Holy Trinity;" and, on a higher footing of authority, "The Little Office,' or Hours of the B. V. M." This had been in use from the middle of the 6th century, when Pope Zachary ordered it to be said by certain monks in addition to the Canonical Hours. It fell into disuse, but was revived by Damian, A.D. 1056. The Council of Claremont, A.D. 1096, made its use obligatory upon all clergy, till the bull of Pius V. released the secular clergy from the obligation. It was much used by devout laity, and English versions of these hours, with other devotions, were in use in English, under the name of 'The Prymer,' in the 14th century. The Breviary was called in England "Portiforium." The occasional offices of the Church, e.g., Baptism, Matrimony, Visitation of the Sick, Churching of Women, Extreme Unction, Burial, are contained in the "Manuals," or "Rituals," and in their main outline are of great antiquity.

66

The offices of which we have spoken, though still retained by the Church, have long ceased in the Latin Church to be used by the people. Before the Reformation all clergy were under obligations to recite the canonical hours either publicly or privately; but there is little evidence of the people attending them when said in public, though some writers think that in England Matins, Lauds, and Prime were recommended to the laity as a preparation for the Mass. The laity fulfilled their duty by attending Mass on Sundays and Days of Obligation. In the churches of the Roman obedience the clergy are still bound to their observance; but with the exception of the Sunday Vespers, these offices are all but unknown to the laity. The Anglican Prayer Book enjoins that "all priests and deacons are to say daily the Morning and Evening Prayer, either privately or openly, not being let by sickness or some other urgent cause;" and in the ordinary Church of England service the ancient offices in their modified form of "Morning and Evening Prayer," occupy the prominent place, and are most familiar to her laity. As congregational services in their ancient form, the 86 offices' are nowhere to be found. (Bingham, Christian Antiquities; Freeman, Principles of Divine Service; Procter on Book of Common Prayer; Maskell, Mon. Rit., &c.)

OGEE, or OGIVE, in architecture, a compound moulding formed by the combination of a convex and a concave, or round and hollow, part. In Greek and Roman architecture the convex part is above the concave below, and it is then technically termed a cyma recta, or cymatium; but in Gothic architecture, in which ogee mouldings are of constant occurrence, the hollow is frequently at the top, the round part below, when it is known as a cyma reversa. [MOULDINGS, E. C. vol. iv. col. 814.]

OGHAMS, certain marks or signs, for the most part vertical, but occasional oblique, or crossing each other, formerly used by the Irish and some other Celtic nations, to represent letters. The origin of the word has been much debated, some writers deriving it from Agama, the Sanskrit for unapproachable or mysterious, and so considering Oghams to have been crypto

graphs; others from Agama, a tree in the same language, and others from yuos (ogmos), the Greek for a furrow, the two last having reference to the forms of the letters or marks themselves. Be this as it may, the name Bethluis or Bethluisnin, which was given to the character of the alphabet by its original inventors, is no doubt derived from their fancied resemblance to trees or plants, after some one of which each of the letters is called. Thus the two first letters, B and L, are so denominated from the initials of beith, birch, and luis, mountain ash; then follow F, from fearn, alder; S, from sail, willow; N, from nion, or nin, ash, and so on throughout the alphabet; but it is from the two first of these only, viz., beith and luis that the alphabet derives its name. The Rev. Charles Graves, in one of his able papers published in the Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy' (vol. iii. pp. 356-368), says that although "the letters of the Bethluisnin are called trees, the name is applied in a special signification to the vowels, as being trees in the most proper sense. The consonants are termed side-trees; and the diphthongs over-trees. The continuous stem-line along which the Ogham letters are ranged is termed the ridge; each short stroke, perpendicular or oblique to it, is called a twig." The whole alphabet is divided into five groups, each containing five letters, and each group is named after its first letter. Thus, the B group is composed of b. l. f. s. n. ; the H group of h. d. t. c. q., and so on. Most of the writers on this subject have entertained different opinions as to the number of the letters in the Ogham alphabet, some maintaining that it consisted of only sixteen letters, others that it had twenty-five, while others again held that it originally comprised as many as eighty different forms of letters, and accordingly several alphabets have been constructed on various systems. Of these the most noted perhaps are those of General Vallancey, Messrs. Halliday, O'Brien, Whitley Stokes, and Haigh; and Drs. O'Connor, Petrie, O'Donovan, and C. Graves. The last two however are the best authorities upon the question, and it is their alphabet which is given below.

Great diversity of opinion has also prevailed as to the time at which the Ogham alphabet was first used. Dr. Graves's conviction is that it was framed by people acquainted with some of the later and more developed Runic alphabets; such, for instance, as that which was in vogue among the Anglo-Saxons, and he regards it not as a primitive alphabet, but as the work of some grammarian, grounding his belief on the fact that the letters are separated into vowels and consonants, and the arrangement of the former in accordance with that of the Irish grammarians into two classes, called respectively "the broad" and "the slender," the broad, which are a, o, u, being placed first, and the slender, e, i, last. He also adduces several other strong arguments in favour of his theories with regard to the whole question of Oghams in several of his able papers, published in some of those works to which references will be given at the end of this article.

5 L 2

sitting on the judgment seat (Matt. xxvii. 19). The symbolic purpose of dreams is assumed as unquestionable by Homer (Il. ii. 1—41, &c.), and was generally believed throughout Greece when Artemidorus, instructed by the Daldian Apollo Mystes, wrote his famous treatise on the Interpretation of Dreams, 'Oreiρokpitikά. The art was practised among the Romans, and was general during the Middle Ages. Its early prevalence in our own country is shown by numerous passages in Cockayne's 'Leechdom in Early England' (vol. iii.). At the present time dreams appear to be regarded by most barbarous races alike in Asia, America, Africa, and Australia, as the result or medium of spiritual intervention. (Seafield, Literature of Dreams; Amyraldus, Divine Dreams, translated by J. Lowde, 1676; Tyler, Primitive Culture, i. 109; Brand, Pop. Antiq. iii. 67, &c.; Sir Thomas Browne, Works, iv. 355—59 (ed. 1835); De Foe, History and Reality of Apparitions, chap. x.). ONOCERIN, C12H2O ? (C21H2002), a crystalline substance contained together with ononin [E. C. vol. vi. col. 37], in the root of the Ononis spinosa. It is insoluble in water, only sparingly soluble in ether, but readily so in boiling alcohol. (Hlasiwetz, Jour. Pr. Chem. Íxv. 142). ONTOLOGY, λóyos TV VTV, the science of things, beings, or entities, is sometimes, a little too loosely, used as co-extensive with metaphysics, of which it is more strictly regarded as one of the principal divisions or departments-the other three, according to Kant, being Rational Physiology, Rational Cosmology, and Rational Theology; and the one other, according to Ferrier, being Epistemology, or the Theory of Knowing. Ontology properly sets itself to answer, or to seek to answer, the questions, What is true being? What is that which has an absolute, independent, detached, and substantial existence? What is the character of this existence, and what can be predicated of it? The object of ontological research is, therefore, being in the abstract or general, without restriction to any one species of beings, or to any individual objects; and it inevitably concerns itself about the supreme and infinite existence, whether this be regarded as mind or matter, or again as a creator, evolver, regulator, legislator, or moral governor. Up to the present moment, in spite of the tentatives of ages of speculation, Ontology is an unrealised science; and, indeed, has been, not without reason, declared, from the nature of things, to be an impossible one. Of all thinking men who have professed to solve what the general run of philosophers have considered as insoluble, the late Professor Ferrier is perhaps the one who has proclaimed his results with the greatest boldness and assumed conclusiveness of demonstration. The following are the last two out of eleven propositions which he devotes to his proof of ontology (a)"Absolute Existence is the synthesis of the subject and object-the union of the universal and the particular-the concretion of the Ego and non-Ego; in other words, the only true, and real, and independent Existences are minds-together-withthat-which-they-apprehend." (b) "All absolute existences are contingent except one; in other words, there is One, but only one Absolute Existence which is strictly necessary; and that Existence is a supreme, and infinite, and everlasting Mind in synthesis with all things." (Kant's Kritik der reinen Vernunft; Dr. C. S. Henry's Epitome of the History of Philosophy; Ferrier's Institutes of Metaphysic: the Theory of Knowing and Being; and other sources.)

ONYCHOMANCY (vuxos, of the nails, and uavrela, divination) divination by the spots on the finger nails. Sir Thomas Browne ('Inquiry into Vulgar and Common Errors,' chap. xxiv.), neatly epitomizes the belief in this means of foretelling good and ill fortune once common among the learned, but now confined to the nursery and the most ignorant rustics: "Nor do we observe that there is much considerable in that doctrine, that spots in the top of the nails do signify things past; in the middle, things present; and at the bottom, events to come. That white specks presage our felicity; blue ones our misfortunes. That those in the nail of the thumb have significations of honour; those in the forefinger of riches; and so respectively in other fingers (according to planetical relations, from whence they receive their names), as Tricassus ('De Inspectione Manus') hath taken up, and Picciolus well rejecteth." (See also Brand, Pop. Antiq., vol. iii. p. 186).

OPALESCENCE OF THE ATMOSPHERE. [DAYLIGHT ACTINIC, EFFECTS OF, E. C. S. col. 706.]

OPERAMETER [NUMBERING MACHINES, E. C. S. vol. v. col. 995].

OPHITES, or OPHITE, from the Greek pis, a serpent,

called also Serpentinians, were a sect of heretics who derived their name from a special cultus which they paid to the serpent who tempted Eve in Paradise. The worship thus paid to the Serpent-and from this circumstance the Gnostic affinities of the Ophites will be at once understood-was rendered to it as being a creature "thoroughly instructed in all knowledge," the "father and author of all the sciences," as being, in fact, either identical with Christ himself, or with the Eon Sophia, Wisdom. The Ophites are said to have taken their rise amongst the Jews, and had emerged into observation before the Christian era; but it was in the 2nd century that they attracted most attention, when they were characterised by the attitude they adopted with reference to Christianity, to which they either opposed themselves on the one hand, or which they travestied, in adopting it, on the other. They distinguished between Jesus, who was born of the Virgin, and the Christ; the latter of whom, as has been stated, they sometimes identified with the Serpent, and held that He had descended from heaven into Jesus, who it was, and not the Christ, who had previously re-ascended into heaven, that suffered on the cross. In accordance with this theory they claimed to be Christian in a special and esoteric sense, as compared with the ordinary followers of Jesus. They kept and fostered a serpent or a certain number of serpents as symbols of the great object of their worship, and paid to them an inferior kind of devotion; and the most distinctive part of their ritual consisted in calling one of these animals from its cage, so that it came forth and twined itself around loaves of bread which had been prepared for this ceremony, and which were afterwards broken and distributed amongst the assembled company, who thus celebrated what they profanely called their Eucharist. In other and more general respects the system of the Ophites was closely allied to that of Valentinus, the most prominent and celebrated of the Pantheistic Gnostics.

The Ophites were still in existence in A.D. 530, when Justinian enacted some laws against them; and, indeed, ophiolatry, although by them incorporated into a more specious and quasiscientific system, was not confined to their times, to their practices, or to their localities. In various ages, and in nearly all parts of the world, in which serpents have occurred-notably in Central Asia, Babylonia, and India; in Egypt, and amongst the negroes of Africa; in Italy, Lithuania, and other countries of Europe; and on the American continent, especially in Mexicothey have been the objects of an adoration dictated by fear, wonder, or affection; and have been regarded as symbolical of wisdom, subtlety, health, or good fortune, as well as of sovereignty, ancestry, life, immortality, moving power, or creative or generative energy.

OPHTHALMOSCOPE (from opeaλuos, the eye, and σкоnew to see), an instrument lately introduced into ophthalmic practice for ascertaining the state of the deeper structures of the eye. The patient is seated in a dark room, with an argand gas, or moderator lamp, behind the shoulder and close to the side of the head; so that the light is on a level with the eye, and the face in the shade. The surgeon, standing or sitting before the patient at a distance of about eighteen inches, applies to his own eye the instrument, which consists of a mirror with central aperture turned towards the eye of the patient, and looking through the aperture, or sight-hole, directs the rays of light reflected from the mirror upon the patient's eye. The surgeon then places a lens at the distance of about an inch from the eye, and by slight backward and forward movements of the head and speculum catches the true focal distance. The image of the fundus of the eye then appears in a glow of red, with the several parts well defined. The natural appearances having been first carefully studied and depicted, and also the several departures from health, these afford standards of comparison and reference applicable to all cases of disease.

OPINIC ACID [ISOPINIC ACID, E. C. S. col. 1387]. OPISTHOTONOS (from 100, backwards, and Teww, to bend), a rigid bending back of the body. [TETANUS, É. C. vol. viii. col. 169, and EMPROSTHOTONOS, E. C. S. col. 878.]

OPIUM, ALKALOIDS OF. Besides the seven formerly described [E. C. vol. vi. col. 51], several other bases have recently been obtained by Hesse from the aqueous extract of opium, namely:

Codamine CHNO, Lanthopine CHNO Laudanine

23 25

CHNO 21H7NO

Laudanosine C.

Meconidine CHNO Hydrocotarnine C12HNO,

381

CH23 NO CHNO CHNO

251

40 25

NO

CH27 CHNO C2H1NO