omitted or changed by Congress; Discoveries in modern times, Dress; Earthquakes; order of the Garter; Labor; Libraries; Luxury; Lynch Law; Marriage; Massacres; Metals; Naval Battles; North-west Passage; Painting; Plague; Planets; Poet Laureate; Popes; Printing; Time; Wandering Jew; Wonders of the World. The great battles of the world, ancient and modern, by land and by sea,―Thermopyla, Marathon, Cannæ, Pharsalia, Blenheim, Austerlitz, Marengo, Waterloo, Bunker Hill, Saratoga, Yorktown, New Orleans, Buena Vista, Cerro Gordo, Chapultepec, Alma, Inkermann, Balaklava, &c.; Salamis, Actium, Aboukir, Trafalgar, Erie, Champlain, &c.,-are duly chronicled. The work is liberally illustrated with wood-cuts, of a superior execution; the most of them designed by Baker & Andrew. A list of them is given on another page. The COTTAGE CYCLOPEDIA is arranged with a view to compress a great amount of matter into a small compass, that the bulk of the volume may not render it inconvenient, and that its expense may not hinder its general circulation. In preparing so extensive a publication for the press, the Compiler can not hope that he has wholly escaped error or that omissions may not be noticed; but he trusts that the volume may be found sufficiently accurate and complete to fulfill the proper design of such a work, and that it may prove a valuable accession to the means of diffusing useful knowledge. COTTAGE CYCLOPEDIA OF HISTORY AND BIOGRAPHY. A. AARON, the brother and associate of Mo- | to relinquish all worldly interests, and devote ses, and the first high-priest of the Jews, born about B.C. 1574, and died B.C. 1451. ABAUZIT, FIRMIN, a Protestant author of celebrity and learning, born in Languedoc, 1679, and died in 1767, having long filled the office of public librarian at Geneva. His knowledge was great, and embraced the whole circle of the sciences. He enjoyed the friendship of Sir Isaac Newton. ABBAS, SHAH, the Great, ascended the throne of Persia in 1589, and distinguished himself in arms, by his victories over the Ottomans, and by wresting Ormus from the Portuguese .in 1622, aided, however, by the British. During his reign, Ispahan became the capital of Persia. His death took place in 1629. themselves to the performance of religious duties, living in a state of celibacy. A monastery receives its title from that of the ecclesiastic governing it. An abbey is governed by an abbot or abbess; a priory, by a prior or prioress, &c. The term nunnery is applied to a religious house inhabited by women. The buildings inhabited by religious communities were originally of the plainest kind, but increased in extent and splendor with their revenues, until, from the humble dwellings of unpretending ecclesiastics, they became the abodes of luxury, brilliant with costly architectural decorations, and hiding, within their lofty walls, the revels of men whose piety was but a cloak for unlimited indulgence. The buildings constituting an abbey or monastery, consisted principally of churches, cloisters, refectories, chapters, parlors, dormitories, courts, gardens, &c. The choir and interior buildings of convents were fenced in by grates, and inaccessible to visitors. The church consisted of the choir, an altar, a nave, aisles, chapels, and a tower. The cloister comprehended the galleries or covered porticoes of a monastery, in which the monks took their exercise, and surrounded an open space, generally devoted to the cultivation of flowers, neatly distributed in parterres, interspersed with grass-plats, and refreshed by careful irrigation. The cloisters were sometimes adorned with valuable paintings, and were generally finished specimens of art. The refectory of an abbey was the hall in which the fathers ate. The refectory ABBASSIDES. The caliphs who, during the eighth and ninth centuries, made Bagdad their capital, are distinguished in history as the Abbassides. Their sway extended over Persia, Arabia, and Syria. Al-Mansur, in 762, built Bagdad, and raised the Saracenic empire to its highest point of splendor and fame. Al-Modi, to whom the empire was transmitted, did not let its reputation wane, and, under Haroun al Raschid, the dignity of the caliphate was preserved and adorned. After Haroun, reigned Al-Amin and Al-Mamun. Under Al-Motasser the governors of several provinces asserted their independence, and Bagdad alone was governed by the caliph. ABBEY, or monastery, is a house erected for the dwell ng of men or women who have taken the monastic vow, which binds them |