returned to Worcester in 1825. In the closing years of his life he was slightly deranged. He published several religious works. AUSTIN, SARAH, wife of John Austin, b. in England, 1793, was well known as the translator of many of the best French and German works. She belonged to the Taylors of Norwich, a family remarkable for the men and women it has produced distinguished by literary and scientific ability. A faithful and devoted wife, she spent a great many years with her husband abroad, and she enjoyed the friendship of many of the most eminent persons in continental society. Mrs. A. translated from the German, Characteristics of Goethe, by Falk, etc., with notes (1833); Fragments from the German Prose Writers, with notes (1841); and The Story without an End, by F. W. Carove (several editions). She also translated from the German, Ranke's Popes of Rome and his History of Germany during the Reformation. Such is the excellence of these works, that they have been commended by the best judges as deserving to retain a place in English historical literature. Mrs. A. translated from the French, M. Cousin's Report on Public Education in Prussia (1834), and M. Guizot's work on The English Revolution (1850). She published in 1839 a work On National Education; and in 1857, Letters on Girls' Schools and on the Training of Working-women. From 1861 to 1863, she was engaged in editing her husband's lectures from his manuscripts, a duty she discharged with very great ability. She d. at Weybridge, on the 8th of Aug., 1867. AUSTIN, STEPHEN F., b. about 1790; son of Moses, and head of the Texan colony founded by his father. The colony occupied the site of the present city of Austin. Though much annoyed by Indians, he made it successful, and it received many accessions until the Americans became so numerous that they held a convention in Mar., 1833, to form a government for themselves. Without heeding the Spanish population, they agreed upon a plan, and A. took it to Mexico to receive its ratification, but there were so many revolutions on foot that he did not get a hearing. Then he sent a letter to Texas, recommending the Americans to unite all the settlements and municipalities and organize a state. This cost him three months' imprisonment, and longer surveillance; but in 1835 he returned to Texas and took command of the small revolutionary army. He induced Sam Houston to take the chief command, while A. went as commissioner to the United States, and prepared the popular mind to receive the new republic of the lone star. Before his mission was successful he returned to Texas, where he died in Dec., 1836. AUSTRALASIA, a term etymologically equivalent to Southern Asia, but according to usage different. While Southern Asia vaguely means the lower regions of that continent, A. definitely indicates those large, or comparatively large, islands which, lying between the Malayan or Indian archipelago and Polynesia proper, are at once rounded off in collective position from the former, and distinguished in individual magnitude from the latter. The islands in question are chiefly Papua or New Guinea, Australia, Tasmania, New Zealand, New Caledonia, New Hebrides, New Ireland, and New Britain-all to be again noticed in their places. In 1886 there was formed a Federal Council by the Australasian colonies, composed of delegates from Victoria, Queensland, Western Australia, Tasmania and Fiji. By this an important step was taken toward Australasian Federation, but the council was merely a deliberative body, and in subsequent years efforts were made to secure an actual Federal Government. A national Australasian convention was held March 2d, 1891, at Sydney, New South Wales, and resolutions were there adopted setting forth the principles upon which a Federal Government should be established. There was to be a Federal Parliament consisting of a Senate and House of Representatives, a Supreme Court like that of the United States, and a Federal Executive. The matter was further discussed at the convention of the Australasian premiers in 1895 and 1896. AUSTRALIA, the s. w. division of Australasia. By some, it is strictly defined to be an island-as, indeed, may either of the masses of land called the old and the new worlds -while by others it is loosely described as a continent. It is bounded on the w. by the Indian ocean; on the n. by Torres strait; on the e. by the Pacific; and on the s., by Bass's strait. It extends in s. lat. from 10° 39′ to 39° 11'; in e. long. from 113° to 153° 16'; while its longest dimensions, as incidentally noticed under the head of AMERICA, may be said to run respectively on a meridian and a parallel. The parallel in question is that of about 25°, near y the mean lat. of A.: and the meridian is that of 142° or 143°, nearly the mean long. of Australasia-a meridian, too, which, when produced in either direction, seems to mark out both Tasmania and Papua as geological continuations of Australia. In English measure, the greatest breadth from n. to s. is upward of 1900, and the greatest length from e. to w. about 2400 miles. Of the resulting rectangle of 3,080,700 sq.m., A., excluding Tasmania (26,385 m.), comprises more than six-sevenths, or, in all, about 2,946,691 sq.m.-one-third the area of South America, as the next larger continent, or nine times that of Borneo, as the next smaller island. In the mutual relations of itself and the ocean-a point of vast importance to so large a mass of landA. is decidedly inferior to every one of the grand divisions of the globe. It is not indented by the sea, as is North America on the e., or Asia on the e. and s., or Europe on all sides but one. Again, as to navigable channels between the coast and the interior, A. is not to be compared even to Africa with its Nile and its Zambezi, its Niger and its Congo, its Gambia and its Senegal, and its many smaller arteries of communication besides. Hydrography.-Among the indentations of the coast, the gulf of Carpentaria, on the n.e., the only one of considerable magnitude, does, it is true, penetrate inward about 500 m. from |