AST, George Anthony Frederick, a German philosopher and philologist of considerable distinction, was born at Gotha in 1778. He was educated at the gymnasium of that town, and afterwards at the university of Jena. He distinguished himself as a student, and in 1802 he became a privat-docent in his alma mater. Three years later he was appointed professor of classical literature in the university of Landshut, where he remained until 1826. when that institution was transferred to Munich. In this latter city he spent the rest of his life. In recognition of his services as a teacher and author he was made an aulic councillor, and a member of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences. He died on the 30th of December 1841. Ast was an independent although not an original thinker. He was more of a scholar and critic than a philosopher. He belonged to the school of Schelling, but was ready to welcome truths from the most diverse quarters. His writings on aesthetics,— System der Kunstlehre (1805) and Grundriss der Aesthetik (1807),—although containing no distinctively new thoughts, had the merit not only of combining and elaborating the principles of Schelling on beauty and art, but of supplementing them to some extent by the views of Winckelmann, Lessing, Kant, Herder, Schiller, Jean Paul, and others, on these subjects. His Grundlinien der Philosophie, published in 1807, was republished in 1809, but soon after sank into oblivion. His Grundriss einer Geschichte der Philosophie, also published in 1807, was longer lived, and deservedly. It was the best book of the kind which the Schelling school could show, at least until the publication of Rixner’s Manual, fifteen years later. It is among the earliest of the works pervaded by the thought, so familiar now but so fresh then, that the ...

ASTELL, Mary, an English authoress, born at Newcastle-upon-Tyne in 1668. She was instructed by her uncle, a clergyman, in Latin and French, logic, mathematics, and natural philosophy. In her twentieth year she went to London, where she continued her studies. Her efforts were especially directed to the mental improvement of her sex, and she published, in 1697, a work entitled A Serious Proposal to the Ladies, wherein a Method is offered for the Improvement of their Minds. With the same end in view she elaborated a scheme for a ladies’ college, which was favourably entertained by Queen Anne, and would have been carried out had not Bishop Burnet interfered. The most important of her other works was The Christian Religion, as professed by a Daughter of the Church of England, published in 1705. She died in 1731.

ASTER, a genus of composite plants (Compositae), found largely in North America, and scattered sparingly over Asia, Europe, and South America. They are usually perennial, and their flowers are arranged in numerous heads (capitula). Asters receive the name of Michaelmas and Christmas daisies, because they have heads like daisies, and, when the weather is mild, they flower up to these periods of the year. They are, consequently, valuable plants in a garden. The only British species is Aster Tripolium, found abundantly in saline marshes near the sea. One of the species (Aster alpinus) grows at a considerable height on the mountains of Europe. Some of them, such as Aster spectabilis of North America, are very showy. The plant called the Cape Aster is Agathaea amelloides, while the China aster is Callistephus chinensis. Both these plants belong also to the Natural Order Compositae. A variety of the Chinese aster, having beautifully coloured florets of rose, violet, and white, is called Reine Marguerite by gardeners.