thrope_.

ALCES`TIS, the wife of Admetus, who gave herself up to death to save
her husband. Hercules descended to the lower world and brought her back.
She is the subject of one of the tragedies of Euripides.

ALCHEMY, the early analysis of substances which has in modern times
developed into chemistry, and which aimed chiefly at the discovery of the
philosopher's stone, of a universal solvent, and of the elixir of life;
it has been defined to be "an art without art, which has its beginning in
falsehood, its middle in toil, and its end in poverty."

ALCIBI`ADES, an Athenian of high birth, and related to Pericles,
possessed of a handsome person, brilliant abilities, and great wealth,
but was of a wayward temper and depraved, whom Socrates tried hard to win
over to virtue, but failed. He involved his country in a rash expedition
against Sicily, served and betrayed it by turns in the Peloponnesian war,
and died by assassination in exile (450-404 B.C.).

ALCI`DES, the grandson of Alcaeus, a patronymic of Hercules.

ALCIN`OUS, a king of the Phaeacians, the father of Nausicaa, who
figures in the Odyssey as the host of Ulysses, who had been shipwrecked
on his shore.

ALCI`RA (18), a walled town in Spain, on an island 22 m. SW. of
Valencia.

ALCMAN, an early Greek lyric poet, born at Sardis.

ALCME`NE, the wife of Amphitryon and the mother of Hercules.

ALCMEONIDAE, a powerful Athenian family, of which Pericles and
Alcibiades were members, who professed to be descended from Alcmaeon, the
grandson of Nestor.

ALCOCK, JOHN, an eminent ecclesiastic of the reign of Edward IV.,
distinguished for his love of learning and learned men; _d_. 1500.

ALCOHOL, pure or highly rectified spirit obtained from fermented
saccharine solutions by distillation, and the intoxicating principle of
all spirituous liquors.

ALCOHOLISM, the results, acute or chronic, of the deleterious action
of alcohol on the human system.

ALCORAN`. See KORAN.

ALCOTT, LOUISA MARY, a popular American authoress, who acted as a
nurse to the wounded during the Civil War; her works mostly addressed to
the young (1832-1888).

ALCOY (30), a town in Spain, N. of Alicanti; staple manufacture,
paper.

AL`CUIN, a learned Englishman, a disciple of Bede; invited by
Charlemagne to introduce scholarly culture into the empire and establish
libraries and schools of learning; was one of those men whose work lies
more in what they infl