Chapter Excalibur to Ezzelin of E by Brewer's Readers Handbook

3. The “call of Moses” to lead the people out of the land of bondage (chs. iii.—xix.).

4. The march of people till they came to Sinai in the wilderness (chs. xv.—xix.).

5. The laws and ordinances to be observed for the future (ch. xx.—xl.).

Exta (That’s). That’s Exta, as the woman said when she saw Kerton (a Devonshire saying), that is, “I thought my work was done, but there are more last words.” “Exta” is a popular pronunciation of Exeter, and “Kerton” is Crediton. The woman was walking to Exeter for the first time, and when she reached the grand old church of Kerton or Crediton, supposed it to be Exeter Cathedral. “That’s Exeter Cathedral,” she said, “and the end of my journey.” But it was only Kerton Church, and she had still eight more miles to walk before she got to Exeter.

Exterminator (The), Montbars, chief of a set of filibusters in the seventeent h century. He was a native of Languedoc, and conceived an intense hatred against the Spaniards on reading of their cruelties in the New World. Embarking at Havre, in 1667, Montbars attacked the Spaniards in the Antilles and in Honduras, taking Vera Cruz and Carthagena, and slew them most mercilessly wherever he encountered them (1645–1707).

Eye. Terrible as the eye of Vathek. One of the eyes of this caliph was so terrible in anger that those died who ventured to look thereon, and, had he given way to his wrath, he would have depopulated his whole dominion.—Beckford: Vathek (1784).

Eye-bright or Euphrasia [“joygiving”]. So called from its reputed power in restoring impaired vision.

[The hermit] fumitory gets and eye-bright for the eye.
   —Drayton: Polyolbion, xiii. (1613).

Eye of the Baltic (The), Gottland or Gothland, an island in the Baltic.

Eye of Greece (The), Athens.

Athens, the eye of Greece, mother of arts
And eloquence, native to famous wits.
   —Milton.

Sometimes Sparta is called “The Eye of Greece” also.

Eyes (Grey). With the Arabs, grey eyes are synonymous with sin and enmity. Hence in the Korân, xx., we read, “On that day the trumpet shall be sounded, and we will gather the wicked together, even those having grey eyes.” Al Beidâwi explains this as referring to the Greeks, whom the Arabs detest, and he calls “red whiskers and grey eyes” an idiomatic phrase for “a foe.”

Eyed (One-) people. The Arimaspians of Scythia were a one-eyed people.

N.B.—The Cyclops were giants with only one eye, and that in the middle of the forehead.

Tartaro, in Basque legends, was a one-eyed giant. Sinbad the sailor, in his third voyage, was cast on an island inhabited by one-eyed giants.

Eyre (Jane), a governess, who stoutly copes with adverse circumstances, and ultimately marries a used- up man of fortune, in whom the germs of good feeling and sound sense were only exhausted, not destroyed.—C. Bronté: Jane Eyre (1847).

Ezra (The book of), one of the historic books of the Old Testament, which contains Ezra’s account of the return of the Jews from the Babylonish captivity.

Ezzelin (Sir), the gentleman who recognizes Lara at the table of lord Otho, and charges him with being Conrad the corsair. A duel ensues, and Ezzelin is never heard of more. A serf used to say that he saw