The father of Hugh Capet was rich only by his abbeys, and was called _Hugh the Abbot_. Abbeys were given to queens, to furnish them with pin-money. Ogine, mother of Louis d'Outremer, left her son because he had taken from her the abbey of St. Mary of Laon, and given it to his wife, Gerberge. Thus we have examples of everything. Each one strives to make customs, innovations, laws--whether old or new, abrogated, revived, or mitigated--charters, whether real or supposed--the past, the present and the future, alike subservient to the grand end of obtaining the good things of this world; yet it is always for the greater glory of God. ABLE--ABILITY. ABLE.--An adjective term, which, like almost all others, has different acceptations as it is differently employed. In general it signifies more than _capable_, more than _well-informed_, whether applied to an artist, a general, a man of learning, or a judge. A man may have read all that has been written on war, and may have seen it, without being _able_ to conduct a war. He may be _capable_ of commanding, but to acquire the name of an _able_ general he must command more than once with success. A judge may know all the laws, without being _able_ to apply them. A learned man may not be _able_ either to write or to teach. An _able_ man, then, is _he who makes a great use of what he knows_. A _capable_ man _can_ do a thing; an _able_ one _does_ it. This word cannot be applied to efforts of pure genius. We do not say an _able_ poet, an _able_ orator; or, if we sometimes say so of an orator, it is when he has ably, dexterously treated a thorny subject. Bossuet, for example, having, in his funeral oration over the great Condé, to treat of his civil wars, says that there is a penitence as glorious as innocence itself. He manages this point _ably_. Of the rest he speaks with _grandeur_. We say, an _able_ historian, meaning one who has drawn his materials from good sources, compared different relations, and judged soundly of them; one, in short, who has taken great pains. If he has, moreover, the gift of narrating with suitable eloquence, he is more than _able_, he is a _great_ historian, like Titus, Livius, de Thou, etc. The word _able_ is applicable to those arts which exercise at once the mind and the hand, as painting and sculpture. We say of a painter of sculptor, _he is an able artist_, because these arts require a long novitiate; whereas a man becomes a poet nearly all at once, like Virgil or Ovid, or may even be an orator with very little study, as several preachers have been. Why do we, nevertheless, say, an _able_ preacher? It is because more attention is then paid to art than to eloquence, which is no great eulogium. We do not say of the sublime Bossuet, _he was an able maker of funeral orations_. A mere player of an instrument is _able_; a composer must be more than able; he must have genius. The workman executes _cleverly_ what the man of taste has designed _ably_.