CONFESSIONS OF ROUSSEAU, memoirs published after his death in 1788, in which that writer makes confession of much that was good in him and much that was bad.

CONFESSIONS OF ST. AUGUSTINE, an account which that Father of the Church gives of the errors of his youth and his subsequent conversion.

CONFUCIUS, the Latin form of the name of the great sage of China, Kung Futsze, and the founder of a religion which is based on the worship and practice of morality as exemplified in the lives and teachings of the wise men who have gone before, and who, as he conceived, have made the world what it is, and have left it to posterity to build upon the same basis; while he lived he was held in greater and greater honour by multitudes of disciples, till on his death he became an object of worship, and even his descendants came to be regarded as a kind of sacred caste; he flourished about 550 B.C.

CONGE D’ELIRE, a warrant granted by the Crown to the dean and chapter of a cathedral to elect a particular bishop to a vacant see.

CONGO, the second in length and largest in volume of the African rivers, rises NE. of the Muchinga Mountains in Rhodesia, flows SW. through Lake Bangueola, then N. to the equator; curving in a great semicircle it continues SW., passes in a series of rapids through the coast range, and enters the S. Atlantic by an estuary 6 m. broad.  It brings down more water than the other African rivers put together.  The largest affluents are the Kassai on the left, and the Mobangi on the right bank; 110 m. are navigable to ocean steamers, then the cataracts intervene, and 250 m. of railway promote transit; the upper river is 2 to 4 m. broad, and navigable for small craft up to Stanley Falls, 1068 m.  The name most associated with its exploration is H. M. Stanley; during its course of 3000 m. it bears several names.

CONGO, FRENCH (5,000), a continuous and connected territory extending westward along the right bank of the Congo from Brazzaville to the mouth of the Mobangi, and as far as 4 deg.  N. run N. behind the Cameroons, and along the E. of Shari to Lake Tchad.

CONGO FREE STATE embraces most of the basin of the Congo, touching British territory in Uganda and Rhodesia, with a very narrow outlet to the Atlantic at the river mouth.  It is under the sovereignty of Leopold II. of Belgium, who, in 1890, made over his rights to Belgium with power to annex the State in 1900.  It is nine times the size of Great Britain, and continual native unrest gives great trouble to its administrators.  Its waters are open to all nations, and traders exchange manufactured goods for ivory, palm-oil, coffee and caoutchouc, bees-wax and fruits.  The climate is tropical, on the lower levels malarial.  The population is from 20 to 40 millions.  The centre of administration is Boma, 80 m. from the sea.