The watering-place of Les Eaux-Chaudes is 5 m. by road south-west of Eaux-Bonnes, in a wild gorge on the Gave d’Ossau. The springs are sulphurous, varying in temperature from 52° to 97° F., and are used in cases of rheumatism, certain maladies of women, &c. The thermal establishment is a handsome marble building.
There is fine mountain scenery in the neighbourhood of both places, the Pic de Ger near Eaux-Bonnes, commanding an extensive view. The valley of Ossau, one of the most beautiful in the Pyrenees, before the Revolution formed a community which, though dependent on Béarn, had its own legal organization, manners and costumes, the last of which are still to be seen on holidays.
EAVES (not a plural form as is sometimes supposed, but singular; O. Eng. efes, in Mid. High Ger. obse, Gothic ubizwa, a porch; connected with “over”), in architecture, the projecting edge of a sloping roof, which overhangs the face of the wall so as to throw off the water.
EAVESDRIP, or Eavesdrop, that width of ground around a house or building which receives the rain water dropping from the eaves. By an ancient Saxon law, a landowner was forbidden to erect any building at less than 2 ft. from the boundary of his land, and was thus prevented from injuring his neighbour’s house or property by the dripping of water from his eaves. The law of Eavesdrip has had its equivalent in the Roman stillicidium, which prohibited building up to the very edge of an estate.
From the Saxon custom arose the term “eavesdropper,” i.e. any one who stands within “the eavesdrop” of a house, hence one who pries into others’ business or listens to secrets. At common law an eavesdropper was regarded as a common nuisance, and was presentable at the court leet, and indictable at the sheriff’s tourn and punishable by fine and finding sureties for good behaviour. Though the offence of eavesdropping still exists at common law, there is no modern instance of a prosecution or indictment.
EBBW VALE, an urban district in the western parliamentary division of Monmouthshire, England, 21 m. N.W. of Newport on the Great Western, London & North-Western and Rhymney railways. Pop. (1891) 17,312; (1901) 20,994. It lies near the head of the valley of the river Ebbw, at an elevation of nearly 1000 ft., in a wild and mountainous mining district, which contains large collieries and important iron and steel works.
EBEL, HERMANN WILHELM (1820–1875), German philologist, was born at Berlin on the 10th of May 1820. He displayed in his early years a remarkable capacity for the study of languages, and at the same time a passionate fondness for music and poetry. At the age of sixteen he became a student at the university of Berlin, applying himself especially to philology, and attending the lectures of Böckh. Music continued to be the favourite occupation of his leisure hours, and he pursued the study of it under the direction of Marx. In the spring of 1838 he passed to the university of Halle, and there began to apply himself to comparative philology under Pott. Returning in the following year to his native city, he continued this study as a disciple of Bopp. He took his degree in 1842, and, after spending his year of probation at the French Gymnasium of Berlin, he resumed with great earnestness his language studies. About 1847 he began to study Old Persian. In 1852 he accepted a professorship at the Beheim-Schwarzbach Institution at Filehne, which post he held for six years. It was during this period that his studies in the Old Slavic and Celtic languages began. In 1858 he removed to Schneidemühl, and there he discharged the duties of first professor for ten years. He was afterwards called to the chair of comparative philology at the university of Berlin. He died at Misdroy on the 19th of August 1875. The most important work of Dr Ebel in the field of Celtic philology is his revised edition of the Grammatica Celtica of Professor Zeuss, completed in 1871. This had been preceded by his treatises—De verbi Britannici futuro ac conjunctivo (1866), and De Zeussii curis positis in Grammatica Celtica (1869). He made many learned contributions to Kühn’s Zeitschrift für vergleichende Sprachforschung, and to A. Schleicher’s Beiträge zur vergleichenden Sprachforschung; and a selection of these contributions was translated into English by Sullivan, and published under the title of Celtic Studies (1863). Ebel contributed the Old Irish section to Schleicher’s Indogermanische Chrestomathie (1869). Among his other works must be named Die Lehnwörter der deutschen Sprache (1856).
EBEL, JOHANN GOTTFRIED (1764–1830), the author of the first real guide-book to Switzerland, was born at Züllichau (Prussia). He became a medical man, visited Switzerland for the first time in 1790, and became so enamoured of it that he spent three years exploring the country and collecting all kinds of information relating to it. The result was the publication (Zürich, 1793) of his Anleitung auf die nützlichste und genussvollste Art in der Schweitz zu reisen (2 vols.), in which he gave a complete account of the country, the General Information sections being followed by an alphabetically arranged list of places, with descriptions. It at once superseded all other works of the kind, and was the best Swiss guide-book till the appearance of “Murray” (1838). It was particularly strong on the geological and historical sides. The second (1804–1805) and third (1809–1810) editions filled four volumes, but the following (the 8th appeared in 1843) were in a single volume. The work was translated into French in 1795 (many later editions) and into English (by 1818). Ebel also published a work (2 vols., Leipzig, 1798–1802) entitled Schilderungen der Gebirgsvölker der Schweiz, which deals mainly with the pastoral cantons of Glarus and Appenzell. In 1801 he was naturalized a Swiss citizen, and settled down in Zürich. In 1808 he issued his chief geological work, Über den Bau der Erde im Alpengebirge (Zürich, 2 vols.). He took an active share in promoting all that could make his adopted country better known, e.g. Heinrich Keller’s map (1813), the building of a hotel on the Rigi (1816), and the preparation of a panorama from that point (1823). From 1810 onwards he lived at Zürich, with the family of his friend, Conrad Escher von der Linth (1767–1823), the celebrated engineer. (W. A. B. C.)
EBER, PAUL (1511–1569), German theologian, was born at Kitzingen in Franconia, and was educated at Nuremberg and Wittenberg, where he became the close friend of Philip Melanchthon. In 1541 he was appointed professor of Latin grammar at Wittenberg, and in 1557 professor of the Old Testament. His range of learning was wide, and he published a handbook of Jewish history, a historical calendar intended to supersede the Roman Saints’ Calendar, and a revision of the Latin Old Testament. In the theological conflict of the time he played a large part, doing what he could to mediate between the extremists. From 1559 to the close of his life he was superintendent-general of the electorate of Saxony. He attained some fame as a hymn-writer, his best-known composition being “Wenn wir in höchsten Nöthen sein.” He died at Wittenberg on the 10th of December 1569.
EBERBACH, a town of Germany, in the grand-duchy of Baden, romantically situated on the Neckar, at the foot of the Katzenbuckel, 19 m. E. of Heidelberg by the railway to Würzburg. Pop. (1900) 5857. It contains an Evangelical and a Roman Catholic church, a commercial and a technical school, and, in addition to manufacturing cigars, leather and cutlery, carries on by water an active trade in timber and wine. Eberbach was founded in 1227 by the German king Henry VII., who acquired the castle (the ruins of which overhang the town) from the bishop of Worms. It became an imperial town and passed later to the Palatinate.
See Wirth, Geschichte der Stadt Eberbach (Stuttgart, 1864).
EBERBACH, a famous Cistercian monastery of Germany, in the Prussian province of Hesse-Nassau, situated near Hattenheim in the Rheingau, 10 m. N.W. from Wiesbaden. Founded in 1116 by Archbishop Adalbert of Mainz, as a house of Augustinian canons regular, it was bestowed by him in 1131 upon the Benedictines, but was shortly afterwards repurchased and conferred upon the Cistercian order. The Romanesque church (consecrated in 1186) contains numerous interesting monuments and tombs, notable among them being those of the archbishop of Mainz,
