CARMELITES, a monastic order, originally an association of hermits on Mount Carmel, at length mendicant, called the Order of Our Lady of Mount Carmel, i. e. the Virgin, in consecration to whom it was founded by a pilgrim of the name Berthold, a Calabrian, in 1156.  The Order is said to have existed from the days of Elijah.

CARMEN SYLVA, the nom-de-plume of Elizabeth, queen of Roumania; lost an only child, and took to literature for consolation; has taken an active interest in the elevation and welfare of her sex; b. 1843.

CARMONTEL, a French dramatist; author of little pieces under the name of “Proverbes” (1717-1806).

CARNAC, a seaside fishing-village in the Bay of Quiberon, in the dep. of Morbihan, France, with interesting historical records, particularly Celtic, many of them undecipherable by the antiquary.

CARNARVON, a maritime county in N. Wales, with the highest mountains and grandest scenery in the Principality, and a capital of the same name on the Menai Strait, with the noble ruins of a castle, in which Edward II., the first Prince of Wales, was born.

CARNARVON, HENRY HOWARD, Earl of, Conservative statesman; held office under Lord Derby and Disraeli; was a good classical scholar; wrote the “Druses of Mount Lebanon” (1831-1890).

CARNATIC, an old prov. in the Madras Presidency of India that extended along the Coromandel coast from Cape Comorin, 600 m.  N.

CARNEADES, a Greek philosopher, born at Cyrene; his whole philosophy a polemic against the dogmatism of the Stoics, on the alleged ground of the absence of any criterion of certainty in matters of either science or morality; conceded that truth and virtue were admirable qualities, but he denied the reality of them; sent once on an embassy to Rome, he propounded this doctrine in the ears of the Conscript Fathers, upon which Cato moved he should be expelled from the senate-house and sent back to Athens, where he came from (213-129 B.C.).

CARNEGIE, ANDREW, ironmaster, born in Dunfermline, the son of a weaver; made a large fortune by his iron and steel works at Pittsburg, U.S., out of which he has liberally endowed institutions and libraries, both in America and his native country; b. 1835.

CARNIOLA (500), a crownland of the Austrian empire, SW. of Austria, on the Adriatic, S. of Carinthia; contains quicksilver mines, second only to those of Almaden, in Spain; the surface is mountainous, and the soil is not grain productive, though in some parts it yields wine and fine fruit.

CARNIVAL, in Roman Catholic countries the name given to a season of feasting and revelry immediately preceding Lent, akin to the Saturnalia of the Romans.

CARNOT, LEONARD SADI, son of Nicolas, founder of thermo-dynamics; in his “Reflexions sur la Puissance du Feu” enunciates the principle of Reversibility, considered the most important contribution to physical science since the time of Newton (1796-1832).  See DR. KNOTT’S “PHYSICS.”