EVANGELINE, the heroine and title of a tale in hexameter verse by Longfellow, in two parts.  Evangeline was the daughter of Benedict Bellefontaine, the richest farmer of Acadia (now Nova Scotia).  At the age of 17 she was legally betrothed by the notary-public to Gabriel, son of Basil the blacksmith, but next day all the colony was exiled by the order of George II., and their houses, cattle, and lands were confiscated.  Gabriel and Evangeline were parted, and now began the troubles of her life.  She wandered from place to place to find her betrothed.  Basil had settled at Louisiana, but when Evangeline reached the place, Gabriel had just left; she then went to the prairies, to Michigan, and so on, but at every place she was just too late to meet him.  At length, grown old in this hopeless search, she went to Philadelphia and became a sister of mercy.  The plague broke out in the city, and as she visited the almshouse she saw an old man smitten down with the pestilence.  It was Gabriel.  He tried to whisper her name, but death closed his lips.  He was buried, and Evangeline lies beside him in the grave.

(Longfellow’s Evangeline (1849) has many points of close similitude with Campbell’s tale of Gertrude of Wyoming, 1809).

EVANS (Sir Hugh), a pedantic Welsh parson and schoolmaster of extraordinary simplicity and native shrewdness.—­Shakespeare, The Merry Wives of Windsor (1601).

The reader may cry out with honest Sir Hugh Evans, “I like not when a ’ooman has a great peard.”—­Macaulay.

Henderson says:  “I have seen John Edwin, in ‘Sir Hugh Evans,’ when preparing for the duel, keep the house in an ecstasy of merriment for many minutes together without speaking a word” (1750-1790).

Evans (William), the giant porter of Charles I. He carried Sir Geoffrey Hudson about in his pocket.  Evans was eight feet in height, and Hudson only eighteen inches.  Fuller mentions this giant amongst his Worthies.—­Sir W. Scott, Peveril of the Peak (time, Charles II.).

EVAN’THE (3 syl.), sister of Sora’no, the wicked instrument of Frederick, duke of Naples, and the chaste wife of Valerio.

The duke tried to seduce her, but failing in this scandalous attempt, offered to give her to any one for a month, at the end of which time the libertine was to suffer death.  No one would accept the offer, and ultimately Evanthe was restored to her husband.—­Beaumont and Fletcher, A Wife for a Month (1624).

EVE (1 syl), or Havah, the “mother of all living” (Gen. iii. 20).  Before the expulsion from paradise her name was Ishah, because she was taken out of ish, i.e. “man” (Gen. ii. 23).

Eve was of such gigantic stature that when she laid her head on one hill near Mecca, her knees rested on two other hills in the plain, about two gun-shots asunder.  Adam was as tall as a palm tree.—­Moncony, Voyage, i. 372, etc.