ELEGIAC VERSE has commonly been adopted by German poets for their elegies, but by English poets never. Schiller defines this kind of verse, which consists of a distich of which the first line is a hexameter and the second a pentameter, in the following pretty illustration:-- "In the hexameter rises the fountain's silvery column. In the pentameter aye falling in melody back." The word "elegy," in English, is one which is frequently used very incorrectly; it should be remembered that it must be mournful, meditative and short without being ejaculatory. Thus Tennyson's _In Memoriam_ is excluded by its length; it may at best be treated as a collection of elegies. Wordsworth's _Lucy_, on the other hand, is a dirge; this is too brief a burst of emotion to be styled an elegy. _Lycidas_ and _Adonais_ remain the two unapproachable types of what a personal elegy ought to be in English. (E. G.) ELEMENT (Lat. _elementum_), an ultimate component of anything, hence a fundamental principle. _Elementum_ was used in Latin to translate the Greek _[Greek: stoicheion]_ (that which stands in a _[Greek: stoichos]_, or row), and is a word of obscure origin and etymology. The root of Lat. _alere_, to nourish, has been suggested, thus making it a doublet of _alimentum_, that which supports life; another explanation is that the word represents LMN., the first three letters of the second part of the alphabet, a parallel use to that of ABC. Apart from its application in chemistry, which is treated below, the word is used of the rudiments or _principia_ of any science or subject, as in Euclid's _Elements of Geometry_, or in the "beggarly elements" (_[Greek: taptocha stoicheia]_, of St Paul in Gal. iv. 9); in mathematics, of a fundamental concept involved in an investigation, as the "elements" of a determinant; and in electricity, of a galvanic (or voltaic) "element" in an electric cell (see BATTERY: _Electric_). In astronomy, "element" is used of any one of the numerical or geometrical data by which the course of a varying phenomenon is computed; it is applied especially to orbital motion and eclipses. The "elements of an orbit" are the six data by which the position of a moving body in its orbit at any time may be determined. The "elements of an eclipse" express and determine the motion of the centre of the shadow-axis, and are the data necessary to compute the phenomena of an eclipse during its whole course, as seen at any place. In architecture the term "element" is applied to the outline of the design of a Decorated window, on which the centres for the tracery are found. These centres will all be found to fall on points which, in some way or other, will be equimultiples of parts of the openings. _Chemical Elements_. Ancient ideas.