ASHBURTON, WILLIAM BINGHAM BARING, son of the preceding, “a very worthy man,” an admirer, and his wife, Lady Harriet, still more, of Thomas Carlyle (1797-1844).

ASHBY-DE-LA-ZOUCH, a small market-town 17 m.  W. of Leicester, figures in “Ivanhoe,” with the ruins of a castle in which Queen Mary was immured.

ASHDOD, a maritime Philistine city 20 m.  S. of Jaffa, seat of the Dagon worship.

ASHE`RA, an image of ASTARTE (q. v.), and associated with the worship of that goddess.

ASH`MOLE, ELIAS, a celebrated antiquary and authority on heraldry; presented to the University of Oxford a collection of rarities bequeathed to him, which laid the foundation of the Ashmolean Collection there (1617-1692).

ASHMUN, JEHUDI, an American philanthropist, founder of the Negro Republic of Liberia, on the W. coast of Africa (1794-1828).

ASH`TAROTH.  See ASTARTE.

ASH`TON-UNDER-LYNE (47), a cotton-manufacturing town near
Manchester.

ASIA, the largest of the four quarters of the globe, and as good as in touch with the other three; contains one-third of all the land, which, from a centre of high elevations, extensive plains, and deep depressions, stretches southward into three large peninsulas separated by three immense arms of the sea, and eastward into three bulging masses and three pronounced peninsulas forming seas, protected by groups of islands; with rivers the largest in the whole world, of which four flow N., two SE., and eight S.; with a large continental basin, also the largest in the world, and with lakes which though they do not match those of America and Africa, strikingly stand at a higher level as we go E.; with every variety of climate, with a richly varied flora and fauna, with a population of 840,000,000, being the half of that of the globe, of chiefly three races, Caucasian, Mongolian, and Malay, at different stages of civilisation, and as regards religion, by far the majority professing the faith of Brahma, Buddha, Mahomet, or Christ.

ASIA MINOR, called also ANATOLE`, a peninsular extension westward of the Armenian and Kurdistan highlands in Asia, bounded on the N. by the Black Sea, on the W. by the Archipelago, and on the S. by the Levant; indented all round, mainland as well as adjoining islands, with bays and harbours, all more or less busy centres of trade; is as large as France, and consists of a plateau with slopes all round to the coasts; has a population of over 28,000,000.

ASKEW, ANNE, a lady of good birth, a victim of persecution in the time of Henry VIII. for denying transubstantiation, tortured on the rack and burnt at the stake, 1546.

ASKEW, ANTONY, a physician and classical scholar, a collector of rare and curious books (1722-1774).

ASMODE`US, a mischievous demon or goblin of the Jewish demonology, who gloats on the vices and follies of mankind, and figures in Le Sage’s “Le Diable Boiteux,” or the “Devil on Two Sticks,” as lifting off the roofs of the houses of Madrid and exposing their inmost interiors and the secret doings of the inhabitants.