COMPTON, HENRY, bishop of London, son of the Earl of Northampton; fought bravely for Charles I.; was colonel of dragoons at the Restoration; left the army for the Church; was made bishop; crowned William and Mary when the archbishop, Sancroft, refused; d. 1713.

COMRIE (8), a village in Perthshire, on the Earn, 20 m.  W. of Perth, in a beautiful district of country; subject to earthquakes from time to time; birthplace of George Gilfillan.

COMTE, AUGUSTE, a French philosopher, born at Montpellier, the founder of POSITIVISM (q. v.); enough to say here, it consisted of a new arrangement of the sciences into Abstract and Concrete, and a new law of historical evolution in science from a theological through a metaphysical to a positive stage, which last is the ultimate and crowning and alone legitimate method, that is, observation of phenomena and their sequence; Comte was first a disciple of St. Simon, but he quarrelled with him; commenced a “Cours de Philosophie Positive” of his own, in six vols.; but finding it defective on the moral side, he instituted a worship of humanity, and gave himself out as the chief priest of a new religion, a very different thing from Carlyle’s hero-worship (1795-1857).

COMUS, the Roman deity who presided over festive revelries; the title of a poem by Milton, “the most exquisite of English or any masks.”

COMYN, JOHN (the Black Comyn), Lord of Badenoch, a Scottish noble of French descent, his ancestor, born at Comines, having come over with the Conqueror and got lands given him; was one of the competitors for the Scottish crown in 1291, and lost it.

COMYN, JOHN (the Red Comyn), son of the preceding; as one of the three Wardens of Scotland defended it against the English, whom he defeated at Roslin; but in 1304 submitted to Edward I., and falling under suspicion of Bruce, was stabbed by him in a monastery at Dumfries in 1306.

CONCEPCION (24), a town in Chile, S. of Valparaiso, with its port, Talcahuano, 7 m. off, one of the safest and most commodious in the country, and ranks next to Valparaiso as a trading centre.

CONCEPTION OF OUR LADY, an order of nuns founded in Portugal in 1484; at first followed the rule of the Cistercians, but afterwards that of St. Clare.

CONCIERGERIE, a prison in the Palais de Justice, Paris.

CONCLAVE, properly the room, generally in the Vatican, where the cardinals are confined under lock and key while electing a Pope.

CONCORD, a town in U.S., 23 m.  NW. of Boston; was the residence of Emerson, Thoreau, and Hawthorne; here the first engagement took place in the American war in 1775.

CONCORD (17), capital of New Hampshire, U.S., a thriving trading place.

CONCORDAT, THE, a convention of July 15, 1801, between Bonaparte and Pius V., regulative of the relations of France with the Holy See.

CONCORDE, PLACE DE LA, a celebrated public place, formed by Louis XV. in 1748, adorned by a statue of him; at the Revolution it was called Place de la Revolution; here Louis XVI. and his queen were guillotined.