RNHAM, 5TH EARL OF, collected a number of valuable MSS. and
rare books known as the Ashburnham Collection; _d_. 1878.

ASHBURTON, ALEXANDER BARING, LORD, second son of Sir Francis Baring,
a Liberal politician, turned Conservative, member of Peel's
administration in 1834-35, sent special ambassador to the United States
in 1842; concluded the boundary treaty of Washington, known as the
Ashburton Treaty; in his retirement "a really good, solid, most cheery,
sagacious, simple-hearted old man" (1774-1848).

ASHBURTON, WILLIAM BINGHAM BARING, son of the preceding, "a very
worthy man," an admirer, and his wife, Lady Harriet, still more, of
Thomas Carlyle (1797-1844).

ASHBY-DE-LA-ZOUCH, a small market-town 17 m. W. of Leicester,
figures in "Ivanhoe," with the ruins of a castle in which Queen Mary was
immured.

ASHDOD, a maritime Philistine city 20 m. S. of Jaffa, seat of the
Dagon worship.

ASHE`RA, an image of ASTARTE (q. v.), and associated with
the worship of that goddess.

ASH`MOLE, ELIAS, a celebrated antiquary and authority on heraldry;
presented to the University of Oxford a collection of rarities bequeathed
to him, which laid the foundation of the Ashmolean Collection there
(1617-1692).

ASHMUN, JEHUDI, an American philanthropist, founder of the Negro
Republic of Liberia, on the W. coast of Africa (1794-1828).

ASH`TAROTH. See ASTARTE.

ASH`TON-UNDER-LYNE (47), a cotton-manufacturing town near
Manchester.

ASIA, the largest of the four quarters of the globe, and as good as
in touch with the other three; contains one-third of all the land, which,
from a centre of high elevations, extensive plains, and deep depressions,
stretches southward into three large peninsulas separated by three
immense arms of the sea, and eastward into three bulging masses and three
pronounced peninsulas forming seas, protected by groups of islands; with
rivers the largest in the whole world, of which four flow N., two SE.,
and eight S.; with a large continental basin, also the largest in the
world, and with lakes which though they do not match those of America and
Africa, strikingly stand at a higher level as we go E.; with every
variety of climate, with a richly varied flora and fauna, with a
population of 840,000,000, being the half of that of the globe, of
chiefly three races, Caucasian, Mongolian, and Malay, at different stages
of civilisation, and as regards religion, by far the majority professing
the fai