Chapter 4 of 6 · 42710 words · ~214 min read

part iii

. pp. 315-327.)

BUTTRESS (from the O. Fr. _bouteret_, that which bears a thrust, from _bouter_, to push, cf. Eng. "butt" and "abutment"), masonry projecting from a wall, provided to give additional strength to the same, and also to resist the thrust of the roof or wall, especially when concentrated at any one point. In Roman architecture the plans of the building, where the vaults were of considerable span and the thrust therefore very great, were so arranged as to provide cross-walls, dividing the aisles, as in the case of the Basilica of Maxentius, and, in the Thermae of Rome, the subdivisions of the less important halls, so that there were no visible buttresses. In the baths of Diocletian, however, these cross-walls rose to the height of the great vaulted hall, the tepidarium, and their upper portions were decorated with niches and pilasters. In a palace at Shuka in Syria, attributed to the end of the 2nd century A.D., where, in consequence of the absence of timber, it was necessary to cover over the building with slabs of stones, these latter were carried on arches thrown across the great hall, and this necessitated two precautions, viz. the provision of an abutment inside the building, and of buttresses outside, the earliest example in which the feature was frankly accepted. In Byzantine work there were no external buttresses, the plans being arranged to include them in cross-walls or interior abutments. The buttresses of the early Romanesque churches were only pilaster strips employed to break up the wall surface and decorate the exterior. At a slightly later period a greater depth was given to the lower portion of the buttresses, which was then capped with a deep sloping weathering. The introduction of ribbed vaulting, extended to the nave in the 12th century, and the concentration of thrusts on definite points of the structure, rendered the buttress an absolute necessity, and from the first this would seem to have been recognized, and the architectural treatment already given to the Romanesque buttress received [v.04 p.0892] a remarkable development. The buttresses of the early English period have considerable projection with two or three sets-off sloped at an acute angle dividing the stages and crowned by triangular heads; and slender columns ("buttress shafts") are used at the angle. In later work pinnacles and niches are usually employed to decorate the summits of the buttresses, and in the still later Perpendicular work the vertical faces are all richly decorated with panelling.

BUTYL ALCOHOLS, C_4H_9OH. Four isomeric alcohols of this formula are known; two of these are primary, one secondary, and one tertiary (see ALCOHOLS). Normal butyl alcohol, CH_3·(CH_2)_2·CH_2OH, is a colourless liquid, boiling at 116.8°, and formed by reducing normal butyl aldehyde with sodium, or by a peculiar fermentation of glycerin, brought about by a schizomycete. Isobutyl alcohol, (CH_3)_2CH·CH_2OH, the butyl alcohol of fermentation, is a primary alcohol derived from isobutane. It may be prepared by the general methods, and occurs in fusel oil, especially in potato spirit. It is a liquid, smelling like fusel oil and boiling at 108.4° C. Methyl ethyl carbinol, CH_3·C_2H_5·CHOH, is the secondary alcohol derived from n-butane. It is a strongly smelling liquid, boiling at 99°. Trimethyl carbinol or tertiary butyl alcohol, (CH_3)_3·COH, is the simplest tertiary alcohol, and was obtained by A. Butlerow in 1864 by acting with zinc methyl on acetyl chloride (see ALCOHOLS). It forms rhombic prisms or plates which melt at 25° and boil at 83°, and has a spiritous smell, resembling that of camphor.

BUTYRIC ACID, C_4H_8O_2. Two acids are known corresponding to this formula, _normal butyric acid_, CH_3·CH_2·CH_2·COOH, and _isobutyric acid_, (CH_3)_2·CH·COOH. Normal butyric acid or fermentation butyric acid is found in butter, as an hexyl ester in the oil of _Heracleum giganteum_ and as an octyl ester in parsnip (_Pastinaca sativa_); it has also been noticed in the fluids of the flesh and in perspiration. It may be prepared by the hydrolysis of ethyl acetoacetate, or by passing carbon monoxide over a mixture of sodium acetate and sodium ethylate at 205° C. (A. Geuther, _Ann._, 1880, 202, p.306), C_2H_5ONa + CH_3COONa + CO = H·CO_2Na + CH_3·CH_2·CH_2·COONa. It is ordinarily prepared by the fermentation of sugar or starch, brought about by the addition of putrefying cheese, calcium carbonate being added to neutralize the acids formed in the process. A. Fitz (_Ber._, 1878, 11 p. 52) found that the butyric fermentation of starch is aided by the direct addition of _Bacillus subtilis_. The acid is an oily liquid of unpleasant smell, and solidifies at -19° C.; it boils at 162.3° C., and has a specific gravity of 0.9746 (0° C.). It is easily soluble in water and alcohol, and is thrown out of its aqueous solution by the addition of calcium chloride. Potassium bichromate and sulphuric acid oxidize it to carbon dioxide and acetic acid, while alkaline potassium permanganate oxidizes it to carbon dioxide. The calcium salt, Ca(C_4H_7O_2)_2·H_2O, is less soluble in hot water than in cold.

_Isobutyric acid_ is found in the free state in carobs (_Ceratonia siliqua_) and in the root of _Arnica dulcis_, and as an ethyl ester in croton oil. It may be artificially prepared by the hydrolysis of isopropylcyanide with alkalies, by the oxidation of isopropyl alcohol with potassium bichromate and sulphuric acid (I. Pierre and E. Puchot, _Ann. de chim. et de phys._, 1873, [4] 28, p. 366), or by the action of sodium amalgam on methacrylic acid, CH_2·C(CH_3)·COOH. It is a liquid of somewhat unpleasant smell, boiling at 155.5° C. Its specific gravity is 0.9697 (0°). Heated with chromic acid solution to 140° C., it gives carbon dioxide and acetone. Alkaline potassium permanganate oxidizes it to [alpha]-oxyisobutyric acid, (CH_3)_2·C(OH)·COOH, whilst concentrated nitric acid converts it into dinitroisopropane. Its salts are more soluble in water than those of the normal acid.

BUXAR, or BAXAR, a town of India, in the district of Shahabad, Bengal, on the south bank of the Ganges, and on the East Indian railway. Pop. (1901) 13,945. There is a dismantled fort of small size which was important from its commanding the Ganges. A celebrated victory was gained here on the 23rd of October 1764 by the British forces under Major (afterwards Sir Hector) Munro, over the united armies of Shuja-ud-Dowlah and Kasim Ali Khan. The

## action raged from 9 o'clock till noon, when the enemy gave way. Pursuit

was, however, frustrated by Shuja-ud-Dowlah sacrificing a part of his army to the safety of the remainder. A bridge of boats had been constructed over a stream about 2 m. distant from the field of battle, and this the enemy destroyed before their rear had passed over. Through this act 2000 troops were drowned, or otherwise lost; but destructive as was this proceeding, it was, said Major Munro, "the best piece of generalship Shuja-ud-Dowlah showed that day, because if I had crossed the rivulet with the army, I should either have taken or drowned his whole army in the Karamnasa, and come up with his treasure and jewels, and Kasim Ali Khan's jewels, which I was informed amounted to between two and three millions."

BUXTON, JEDEDIAH (1707-1772), English arithmetician, was born on the 20th of March 1707 at Elmton, near Chesterfield, in Derbyshire. Although his father was schoolmaster of the parish, and his grandfather had been the vicar, his education had been so neglected that he could not write; and his knowledge, except of numbers, was extremely limited. How he came first to know the relative proportions of numbers, and their progressive denominations, he did not remember; but on such matters his attention was so constantly riveted, that he frequently took no cognizance of external objects, and when he did, it was only with reference to their numbers. He measured the whole lordship of Elmton, consisting of some thousand acres, simply by striding over it, and gave the area not only in acres, roods and perches, but even in square inches. After this, he reduced them into square hairs'-breadths, reckoning forty-eight to each side of the inch. His memory was so great, that in resolving a question he could leave off and resume the operation again at the same point after the lapse of a week, or even of several months. His perpetual application to figures prevented the smallest acquisition of any other knowledge. His wonderful faculty was tested in 1754 by the Royal Society of London, who acknowledged their satisfaction by presenting him with a handsome gratuity. During his visit to the metropolis he was taken to see the tragedy of _Richard III._ performed at Drury Lane theatre, but his whole mind was given to the counting of the words uttered by David Garrick. Similarly, he set himself to count the steps of the dancers; and he declared that the innumerable sounds produced by the musical instruments had perplexed him beyond measure. He died in 1772.

A memoir appeared in the _Gentleman's Magazine_ for June 1754, to which, probably through the medium of a Mr Holliday, of Haughton Hall, Nottinghamshire, Buxton had contributed several letters. In this memoir, his age is given as forty-nine, which points to his birth in 1705; the date adopted above is on the authority of Lysons' _Magna Britannia_ (Derbyshire).

BUXTON, SIR THOMAS FOWELL (1786-1845), English philanthropist, was born in Essex on the 1st of April 1786, and was educated at Trinity College, Dublin, where, in spite of his early education having been neglected, hard work made him one of the first men of his time, with a high reputation as a speaker. In 1807 he married Hannah Gurney, sister of the celebrated Elizabeth Fry. As his means were not sufficient to support his family, he entered in 1808 the brewery of Truman, Hanbury & Company, of which his uncles, the Hanburys, were partners. He devoted himself to business with characteristic energy, became a partner in 1811, and soon had the whole concern in his hands. In 1816 he brought himself into notice by his speech on behalf of the Spitalfields weavers, and in 1818 he published his able _Inquiry into Prison Discipline_. The same year he was elected M.P. for Weymouth, a borough for which he continued to sit till 1837. In the House of Commons he had a high reputation as an able and straightforward speaker, devoted to philanthropic schemes. Of these plans the most important was that for the abolition of slavery in the British colonies. Buxton devoted his life to this object, and through defeat and opposition, despite the attacks of enemies and the remonstrances of faint-hearted friends, he remained true to it. Not till 1833 was he successful, and even then only

## partially, for he was compelled to admit into the bill some clauses against

which his better judgment had decided. In 1837 he ceased to [v.04 p.0893] sit in the House of Commons. He travelled on the continent in 1839 to recruit his health, which had given way, and took the opportunity of inspecting foreign prisons. He was made a baronet in 1840, and then devoted himself to a plan for ameliorating the condition of the African natives. The failure of the Niger expedition of 1841 was a blow from which he never recovered. He died on the 19th of February 1845.

See _Memoir and Correspondence of Sir T.F. Buxton_ (1848), by his third son, Charles Buxton (1823-1871), a well-known philanthropist and member of parliament.

BUXTON, a market town and fashionable health-resort in the High Peak parliamentary division of Derbyshire, England, on the London & North-Western and Midland railways, 36 m. N.W. by N. of Derby. Pop. of urban district (1901) 10,181. It occupies a high position, lying between 1000 and 1150 ft. above sea-level, in an open hollow, surrounded at a distance by hills of considerable elevation, except on the south-east side, where the Wye, which rises about half a mile away, makes its exit. The old town (High Buxton) stands a little above the new, and consists of one wide street, and a considerable market-place with an old cross. The new town is the richer portion. The Crescent is a fine range of buildings in the Doric style, erected by the duke of Devonshire in 1779-1788. It contains hotels, a ballroom, a bank, a library and other establishments, and the surrounding open grounds are laid out in terraces and gardens. The Old Hall hotel at the west end of the Crescent stands on the site of the mansion built in 1572 by the earl of Shrewsbury in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, which was the residence of Mary queen of Scots when she visited the town. The mineral waters of Buxton, which have neither taste nor smell, are among the most noted in England, and are particularly efficacious in cases of rheumatism and gout. There are numerous public and private baths, the most important of which are those in the establishment at the eastern end of the Crescent. The springs supply hot and cold water at a very short distance from each other, flowing at the rate of 60 gallons a minute. The former possesses a uniform temperature of 82° Fahr., and the principal substances in solution are bicarbonate of calcium, bicarbonate of magnesium, chloride of sodium, chloride of magnesium and silica acid. There is also a chalybeate spring known as St Anne's well, situated at the S.W. corner of the Crescent, the water of which when mixed with that of the other springs proves purgative. The Devonshire hospital, formerly known as the Bath Charity, is a benevolent institution, supported by voluntary subscriptions. Every year some thousands of poor patients are treated free of cost; and the hospital was enlarged for their accommodation, a dome being added which is of greater circumference than any other in Europe. In 1894 the duke of Devonshire erected a handsome pump-room at St Anne's well. The Buxton season extends from June to October, and during that period the town is visited by thousands, but it is also popular as a winter resort. The Buxton Gardens are beautifully laid out, with ornamental waters, a fine opera-house, pavilion and concert hall, theatre and reading rooms. Electric lighting has been introduced, and there is an excellent golf course. The Cavendish Terrace forms a fine promenade, and the neighbourhood of the town is rich in objects of interest. Of these the chief are Poole's Hole, a vast stalactite cave, about half a mile distant; Diamond Hill, which owes its name to the quartz crystals which are not uncommon in its rocks; and Chee Tor, a remarkable cliff, on the banks of the Wye, 300 ft. high. Ornaments are manufactured by the inhabitants from alabaster and spar; and excellent lime is burned at the quarries near Poole's Hole. Buxton is an important centre for horse-breeding, and a large horse-fair is held annually. Although the annual rainfall, owing to the situation of the town towards the western flank of the Pennine Hills, is about 49 in., the air is

## particularly dry owing to the high situation and the rapidity with which

waters drain off through the limestone. The climate is bracing and healthy.

The waters were known and used by the Romans, but to a limited extent, and no remains of their baths survive. Roman roads connected the place with Derby, Brough in Edale and Manchester. Buxton (Bawdestanes, Bue-stanes), formed into a civil parish from Bakewell in 1895, has thus claims to be considered one of the oldest English spas. It was probably the "Bectune" mentioned in Domesday. After the departure of the Romans the baths seem to have been long neglected, but were again frequented in the 16th century, when the chapel of St Anne was hung round with the crutches of those who were supposed to owe their cure to her healing powers; these interesting relics were destroyed at the Reformation. The baths were visited at least four times by Mary queen of Scots, when a prisoner in charge of George, earl of Shrewsbury, other famous Elizabethan visitors being Lord Burleigh, the earl of Essex, and Robert, earl of Leicester. At the close of the 18th century the duke of Devonshire, lord of the manor (whose ancestor Sir Ralph de Gernons was lord of Bakewell in 1251), spent large sums of money on improvements in the town. In 1781 he began to build the famous Crescent, and since that time Buxton has steadily increased in favour as an inland watering-place. In 1813 a weekly market on Saturday and four annual fairs were granted. These were bought by the local authorities from the duke of Devonshire in 1864.

See Gough's edition of Camden's _Britannia_; Stephen Glover, _History of the County of Derby_ (Derby, 1829); W. Bemrose, _Guide to Buxton_ (London, 1869).

BUXTORF, or BUXTORFF, JOHANNES (1564-1629), German Hebrew and Rabbinic scholar, was born at Kamen in Westphalia on the 25th of December 1564. The original form of the name was Bockstrop, or Boxtrop, from which was derived the family crest, which bore the figure of a goat (Ger. _Bock_, he-goat). After the death of his father, who was minister of Kamen, Buxtorf studied at Marburg and the newly-founded university of Herborn, at the latter of which C. Olevian (1536-1587) and J.P. Piscator (1546-1625) had been appointed professors of theology. At a later date Piscator received the assistance of Buxtorf in the preparation of his Latin translation of the Old Testament, published at Herborn in 1602-1603. From Herborn Buxtorf went to Heidelberg, and thence to Basel, attracted by the reputation of J.J. Grynaeus and J.G. Hospinian (1515-1575). After a short residence at Basel he studied successively under H.B. Bullinger (1504-1575) at Zürich and Th. Beza at Geneva. On his return to Basel, Grynaeus, desirous that the services of so promising a scholar should be secured to the university, procured him a situation as tutor in the family of Leo Curio, son of Coelius Secundus Curio, well-known for his sufferings on account of the Reformed faith. At the instance of Grynaeus, Buxtorf undertook the duties of the Hebrew chair in the university, and discharged them for two years with such ability that at the end of that time he was unanimously appointed to the vacant office. From this date (1591) to his death in 1629 he remained in Basel, and devoted himself with remarkable zeal to the study of Hebrew and rabbinic literature. He received into his house many learned Jews, that he might discuss his difficulties with them, and he was frequently consulted by Jews themselves on matters relating to their ceremonial law. He seems to have well deserved the title which was conferred upon him of "Master of the Rabbins." His partiality for Jewish society brought him, indeed, on one occasion into trouble with the authorities of the city, the laws against the Jews being very strict. Nevertheless, on the whole, his relations with the city of Basel were friendly. He remained firmly attached to the university which first recognized his merits, and declined two invitations from Leiden and Saumur successively. His correspondence with the most distinguished scholars of the day was very extensive; the library of the university of Basel contains a rich collection of letters, which are valuable for a literary history of the time.

WORKS.--_Manuale Hebraicum et Chaldaicum_ (1602; 7th ed., 1658); _Synagoga Judaica_ (1603 in German; afterwards translated into Latin in an enlarged form), a valuable repertory of information regarding the opinions and ceremonies of the Jews; _Lexicon Hebraicum et Chaldaicum cum brevi Lexico Rabbinico Philosophico_ (1607; reprinted at Glasgow, 1824); his great Rabbinical Bible, _Biblic Hebraica cum Paraphr. Chald. et Commentariis Rabbinorum_ (2 vols., 1618; 4 vols., 1618-1619), containing, in addition to the Hebrew [v.04 p.0894] text, the Aramaic Paraphrases of Targums, punctuated after the analogy of the Aramaic passages in Ezra and Daniel (a proceeding which has been condemned by Richard Simon and others), and the Commentaries of the more celebrated Rabbis, with various other treatises; _Tiberias, sive Commentarius Masoreticus_ (1620; quarto edition, improved and enlarged by J. Buxtorf the younger, 1665), so named from the great school of Jewish criticism which had its seat in the town of Tiberias. It was in this work that Buxtorf controverted the views of Elias Levita regarding the late origin of the Hebrew vowel points, a subject which gave rise to the controversy between Louis Cappel and his son Johannes Buxtorf (_q.v._). Buxtorf did not live to complete the two works on which his reputation chiefly rests, viz. his great _Lexicon Chaldaicum, Talmudicum, et Rabbinicum_, and the _Concordantiae Bibliorum Hebraicorum_, both of which were edited by his son. They are monuments of untiring labour and industry. The lexicon was republished at Leipzig in 1869 with some additions by Bernard Fischer, and the concordance was assumed by Julius Fürst as the basis of his great Hebrew concordance, which appeared in 1840.

For additional information regarding his writings see _Athenae Rauricae_, pp. 444-448; articles in Ersch and Gruber's _Encyclopädie_, and Herzog-Hauck, _Realencyk._; J.P. Niceron's _Mémoires_, vol. xxxi. pp. 206-215; J.M. Schroeckh's _Kirchengeschichte_, vol. v. (Post-Reformation period), pp. 72 seq. (Leipzig, 1806); G.W. Meyer's _Geschichte der Schrift-Erklärung_, vol. iii. (Göttingen, 1804); and E. Kautsch, _Johannes Buxtorf der Ältere_ (1879).

BUXTORF, or BUXTORFF, JOHANNES (1599-1664), son of the preceding, was born at Basel on the 13th of August 1599, and when still a boy attained considerable proficiency in the classical languages. Entering the university at the age of twelve, he was only sixteen when he obtained his master's degree. He now gave himself up to theological and especially to Semitic studies, concentrating later on rabbinical Hebrew, and reading while yet a young man both the Mishna and the Jerusalem and Babylonian Gemaras. These studies he further developed by visits to Heidelberg, Dort (where he made the acquaintance of many of the delegates to the synod of 1619) and Geneva, and in all these places acquired a great reputation. In 1622 he published at Basel a _Lexicon Chaldaicum et Syriacum_, as a companion work to his father's great Rabbinical Bible. He declined the chair of logic at Lausanne, and in 1624 was appointed general deacon of the church at Basel. On the death of his father in 1629, he was unanimously designated his successor in the Hebrew professorship. From this date until his death in 1664 he remained at Basel, declining two offers which were made to him from Groningen and Leiden, to accept the Hebrew chair in these two celebrated schools. In 1647 the governing body of the university founded, specially for him, a third theological professorship, that of "Commonplaces and Controversies," which Buxtorf held for seven years along with the Hebrew chair. When, however, the professorship of the Old Testament became vacant in 1654 by the death of Theodor Zwinger, Buxtorf resigned the chair of theology and accepted that of the Old Testament instead. He was four times married, his three first wives dying shortly after marriage and the fourth predeceasing her husband by seven years. His children died young, with the exception of two boys, the younger of whom, Jakob (1645-1704), became his father's colleague, and then his successor, in the chair of Hebrew. The same distinction fell to the lot of his nephew Johann (1663-1732).

A considerable portion of Buxtorf's public life was spent in controversy regarding disputed points in biblical criticism, in reference to which he had to defend his father's views. The attitude of the Reformed churches at that time, as opposed to the Church of Rome, led them to maintain many opinions in regard to biblical questions which were not only erroneous, but altogether unnecessary for the stability of their position. Having renounced the dogma of an infallible church, it was deemed necessary to maintain as a counterpoise, not only that of an infallible Bible, but, as the necessary foundation of this, of a Bible which had been handed down from the earliest ages without the slightest textual alteration. Even the vowel points and accents were held to have been given by divine inspiration. The Massoretic text of the Old Testament, therefore, as compared either with that of the recently discovered Samaritan Pentateuch, or the Septuagint or of the Vulgate, alone contained the true words of the sacred writers. Although many of the Reformers, as well as learned Jews, had long seen that these assertions could not be made good, there had been as yet no formal controversy upon the subject. Louis Cappel (_q.v._) was the first effectually to dispel the illusions which had long prevailed by a work on the modern origin of the vowel points and accents. The elder Buxtorf had counselled him not to publish his work, pointing out the injury which it would do the Protestant cause, but Cappel sent his MS. to Thomas Erpenius of Leiden, the most learned orientalist of his day, by whom it was published in 1624, under the title _Arcanum Punctationis revelatum_, but without the author's name. The elder Buxtorf, though he lived five years after the publication of the work, made no public reply to it, and it was not until 1648 that Buxtorf junior published his _Tractatus de punctorum origine, antiquitate, et authoritate, oppositus Arcano punctationis revelato Ludovici Cappelli_. He tried to prove by copious citations from the rabbinical writers, and by arguments of various kinds, that the points, if not so ancient as the time of Moses, were at least as old as that of Ezra, and thus possessed the authority of divine inspiration. Unfortunately he allowed himself to employ contemptuous epithets towards Cappel, such as "innovator" and "visionary." Cappel speedily prepared a second edition of his work, in which, besides replying to the arguments of his opponent, and fortifying his position with new ones, he retorted his contumelious epithets with interest. Owing to various causes, however, this second edition did not see the light until 1685, when it was published at Amsterdam in the edition of his collected works. Besides this controversy, Buxtorf engaged in three others with the same antagonist, on the subject of the integrity of the Massoretic text of the Old Testament, on the antiquity of the present Hebrew characters, and on the Lord's Supper. In the two former Buxtorf supported the untenable position that the text of the Old Testament had been transmitted to us without any errors or alteration, and that the present square or so-called Chaldee characters were coeval with the original composition of the various books. These views were triumphantly refuted by his great opponent in his _Critica Sacra_, and in his _Diatriba veris et antiquis Ebraicorum literis_.

Besides the works already mentioned in the course of this article, Buxtorf edited the great _Lexicon Chaldaicum, Talmudicum, et Rabbinicum_, on which his father had spent the labour of twenty years, and to the completion of which he himself gave ten years of additional study; and the great Hebrew _Concordance_, which his father had little more than begun. In addition to these, he published new editions of many of his father's works, as well as others of his own, complete lists of which may be seen in the _Athenae Rauricae_ and other works enumerated at the close of the preceding article.

BUYING IN, on the English stock exchange, a transaction by which, if a member has sold securities which he fails to deliver on settling day, or any of the succeeding ten days following the settlement, the buyer may give instructions to a stock exchange official to "buy in" the stock required. The official announces the quantity of stock, and the purpose for which he requires it, and whoever sells the stock must be prepared to deliver it immediately. The original seller has to pay the difference between the two prices, if the latter is higher than the original contract price. A similar practice, termed "selling out," prevails when a purchaser fails to take up his securities.

BUYS BALLOT'S LAW, in meteorology, the name given to a law which may be expressed as follows:--"Stand with your back to the wind; the low-pressure area will be on your left-hand." This rule, the truth of which was first recognized by the American meteorologists J.H. Coffin and W. Ferrel, is a direct consequence of Ferrel's Law (_q.v._). It is approximately true in the higher latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere, and is reversed in the Southern Hemisphere, but the angle between barometric gradient and wind is not a right angle in low latitudes. The law takes its name from C.H.D. Buys Ballot, a Dutch meteorologist, who published it in the _Comptes rendus_, November 1857.

BUZEU, the capital of the department of Buzeu, Rumania, situated near the right bank of the river Buzeu, between the Carpathian Mountains and the fertile lowlands of south Moldavia and east Walachia. Pop. (1900) 21,561. Buzeu is important as a market for petroleum, timber and grain. It is the meeting [v.04 p.0895] place of railroads from Râmnicu Sarat, Braila and Ploesci. Amber is found by the riverside, and there are cloth-mills in the city. Buzeu is the seat of a bishop, whose cathedral was erected in 1640 by Prince Matthias Bassarab of Walachia, on the site of an older church. In the neighbourhood there are many monasteries. Buzeu was formerly called Napuca or Buzograd.

BUZOT, FRANÇOIS NICOLAS LÉONARD (1760-1794), French revolutionist, was born at Evreux on the 1st of March 1760. He studied law, and at the outbreak of the Revolution was an advocate in his native town. In 1789 he was elected deputy to the states-general, and there became known for his advanced opinions. He demanded the nationalization of the possessions of the clergy, and the right of all citizens to carry arms. After the dissolution of the Constituent Assembly, Buzot returned to Evreux, where he was named president of the criminal tribunal. In 1792 he was elected deputy to the Convention, and took his place among the Girondists. He demanded the formation of a national guard from the departments to defend the Convention against the populace of Paris. His proposal was carried, but never put into force; and the Parisians were extremely bitter against him and the Girondists. In the trial of Louis XVI., Buzot voted for death, but with appeal to the people and postponement of sentence. He had a decree of death passed against the _émigrés_ who did not return to France, and against anyone who should demand the re-establishment of the monarchy. Proscribed with the Girondists on the 2nd of June 1793, he succeeded in escaping, and took refuge in Normandy, where he contributed to organize a federalist insurrection against the Convention, which was speedily suppressed. Buzot was outlawed, and fled to the neighbourhood of Bordeaux, and committed suicide in the woods of St Émilion on the 18th of June 1794. He was an intelligent and honest man, although he seems to have profited by the sale of the possessions of the clergy, but he had a stubborn, unyielding temperament, was incapable of making concessions, and was dominated by Madame Roland, who imparted to him her hatred of Danton and the Montagnards.

See _Mémoires de Pétion, Barbaroux, Buzot_, published by C.A. Daubon (Paris, 1866). For the history of the federalist movement in Normandy, see L. Boivin Champeaux, _Notices pour servir à, l'histoire de la Révolution dans le département de l'Eure_ (Evreux and Paris, 1884).

BUZZARD, a word derived from the Lat. _Buteo_, through the Fr. _Busard_, and used in a general sense for a large group of diurnal birds-of-prey, which contains, among many others, the species usually known as the common buzzard (_Buteo vulgaris_, Leach), though the English epithet is nowadays hardly applicable. The name buzzard, however, belongs quite as rightfully to the birds called in books "harriers," which form a distinct subfamily of _Falconidae_ under the title _Circinae_, and by it one species, the moor-buzzard (_Circus aeruginosus_), is still known in such places as it inhabits. "Puttock" is also another name used in some parts of England, but perhaps is rather a synonym of the kite (_Milvus ictinus_). Though ornithological writers are almost unanimous in distinguishing the buzzards as a group from the eagles, the grounds usually assigned for their separation are but slight, and the diagnostic character that can be best trusted is probably that in the former the bill is decurved from the base, while in the latter it is for about a third of its length straight. The head, too, in buzzards is short and round, while in the eagles it is elongated. In a general way buzzards are smaller than eagles, though there are several exceptions to this statement, and have their plumage more mottled. Furthermore, most if not all of the buzzards, about which anything of the kind is with certainty known, assume their adult dress at the first moult, while the eagles take a longer time to reach maturity. The buzzards are fine-looking birds, but are slow and heavy of flight, so that in the old days of falconry they were regarded with infinite scorn, and hence in common English to call a man "a buzzard" is to denounce him as stupid. Their food consists of small mammals, young birds, reptiles, amphibians and insects--particularly beetles--and thus they never could have been very injurious to the game-preserver, if indeed they were not really his friends, though they have fallen under his ban; but at the present day they are so scarce that in England their effect, whatever it may be, is inappreciable. Buzzards are found over the whole world with the exception of the Australian region, and have been split into many genera by systematists. In the British Islands are two species, one resident (the _B. vulgaris_ already mentioned), and now almost confined to a few wooded districts; the other the rough-legged buzzard (_Archibuteo lagopus_), an irregular winter-visitant, sometimes arriving in large bands from the north of Europe, and readily distinguishable from the former by being feathered down to the toes. The honey-buzzard (_Pernis apivorus_), a summer-visitor from the south, and breeding, or attempting to breed, yearly in the New Forest, does not come into the subfamily _Buteoninae_, but is probably the type of a distinct group, _Perninae_, of which there are other examples in Africa and Asia. In America the name "buzzard" is popularly given to the turkey-buzzard or turkey-vulture (_Cathartes Aura_).

(A. N.)

BYELAYA TSERKOV (_i.e._ White Church), a town of Russia, in the government of Kiev, 32 m. S.S.W. of Vasilkov, on the main road from Kiev to the Crimea, in 49° 47' N. lat. and 30° 7' E. long. Pop. (1860) 12,075; (1897) 20,705. First mentioned in 1155, Byelaya Tserkov was destroyed during the Mongol invasion of the 13th century. In 1550 a castle was built here by the prince of Kiev, and various privileges were bestowed upon the inhabitants. From 1651 the town was subject alternately to Poland and to independent hetmans (Cossack chiefs). In 1793 it was united to Russia. There is a trade in beer, cattle and grain, sold at eleven annual fairs, three of which last for ten days each.

BYELEV, a town of Russia, in the government of Tula, and 67 m. S.W. from the city of that name on the left bank of the Oka, in 53° 48' N. lat., and 36° 9' E. long. Pop. (1860) 8063; (1897) 9567. It is first mentioned in 1147. It belonged to Lithuania in the end of the 14th century; and in 1468 it was raised to the rank of a principality, dependent on that country. In the end of the 15th century this principality began to attach itself to the grand-duchy of Moscow; and by Ivan III. it was ultimately united to Russia. It suffered greatly from the Tatars in 1507, 1512, 1530, 1536 and 1544. In 1826 the empress Elizabeth died here on her way from Taganrog to St Petersburg. A public library was founded in 1858 in memory of the poet Zhukovsky, who was born (1782) in a neighbouring village. The industries comprise tallow-boiling, oil-manufacture, tanning, sugar-refining and distilling. There is a trade in grain, hemp oil, cattle and tallow. A fair is held from the 28th of August to the 10th of September every year.

BYELGOROD (_i.e._ White Town), a town of Russia, in the government of Kursk, 100 m. S.S.E. by rail from the city of that name, in 50° 46' N. lat. and 36° 37' E. long., clustering on a chalk hill on the right bank of the Donets. Pop. (1860) 11,722; (1897) 21,850. In the 17th century it suffered repeatedly from Tatar incursions, against which there was built (from 1633 to 1740) an earthen wall, with twelve forts, extending upwards of 200 m. from the Vorskla to the Don, and called the Byelgorod line. In 1666 an archiepiscopal see was established in the town. There are two cathedral churches, both built in the 16th century, as well as a theological seminary. Candles, leather, soap, lime and bricks are manufactured, and a trade is carried on in grain, cattle, wool, honey, wax and tallow. There are three annual fairs, on the 10th Friday after Easter, the 29th of June and the 15th of August respectively.

BYELOSTOK (Polish, _Bialystok_), a town of West Russia, in the government of and 53 m. by rail S.W. of the city of Grodno, on the main railway line from Moscow to Warsaw, at its junction with the Kiev-Grayevo (Prussian frontier) line. Founded in 1320, it became part of Prussia after the third

## partition of Poland, but was annexed to Russia in 1807, after the peace of

Tilsit. Its development dates from 1845, when woollen-mills were built. Since that time it has grown very rapidly, its population being 13,787 in 1857; 56,629 in 1889; and 65,781 in 1901, three-fourths Jews. Its woollen, silk and felt hat factories give occupation to several thousand workers.

[v.04 p.0896] BYEZHETSK, a town of Russia, in the government of Tver, and 70 m. N.N.E. of the city of that name, on the right bank of the Mologa, in 57° 46' N. lat. and 36° 43' E. long. Pop. (1860) 5423; (1897) 9090. It is mentioned in the chronicles of 1137. On the fall of Novgorod, to which it had belonged, it was incorporated (1479) with the grand-duchy of Moscow. The town is famous for its scythes and shearing hooks, but makes also axes, nails and other hardware, and trades in grain, linen, hemp and flax.

BY-LAW, or BYE-LAW (_by-_ being used in the sense of subordinate or secondary, cf. by-path), a regulation made by councils, boards, corporations and companies, usually under statutory power, for the preservation of order and good government within some place or jurisdiction. When made under authority of a statute, by-laws must generally, before they come into operation, be submitted to some confirming authority for sanction and approval; when approved, they are as binding as enacted laws. By-laws must be reasonable in themselves; they must not be retrospective nor contrary to the general law of the land. By various statutes powers are given to borough, county and district councils, to make by-laws for various purposes; corporate bodies, also, are empowered by their charters to make by-laws which are binding on their members. Such by-laws must be in harmony with the objects of the society and must not infringe or limit the powers and duties of its officers.

BYLES, MATHER (1706-1788), American clergyman, was born in Boston, Massachusetts, on the 26th of March 1706, descended, on his mother's side, from John Cotton and Richard Mather. He graduated at Harvard in 1725, and in 1733 became pastor of the Hollis Street church (Congregational), Boston. He held a high rank among the clergy of the province and was noted for his scholarly sermons and his ready wit. At the outbreak of the War of Independence he was outspoken in his advocacy of the royal cause, and after the British evacuation of Boston his connexion with his church was dissolved. He remained in Boston, however, and subsequently (1777) was arrested, tried and sentenced to deportation. This sentence was later changed to imprisonment in his own house. He was soon released, but never resumed his pastorate. He died in Boston on the 5th of July 1788. Besides many sermons he published _A Poem on the Death of George I._ (1727) and _Miscellaneous Poems_ (1744).

His son, MATHER BYLES (1735-1814), graduated at Harvard in 1751, and was a Congregational clergyman at New London, Connecticut, until 1768, when he entered the Established Church, and became rector of Christ church, Boston. Sympathizing with the royal cause, he settled, after the War of Independence, in St Johns, New Brunswick, where he was rector of a church until his death.

BYNG, JOHN (1704-1757), British admiral, was the fourth son of George Byng, Lord Torrington, and entered the navy in 1718. The powerful influence of his father accounts for his rapid rise in the service. He received his first appointment as lieutenant in 1723, and became captain in 1727. His career presents nothing of note till after his promotion as rear-admiral in 1745, and as vice-admiral in 1747. He served on the most comfortable stations, and avoided the more arduous work of the navy. On the approach of the Seven Years' War the island of Minorca was threatened by an attack from Toulon and was actually invaded in 1756. Byng, who was then serving in the Channel with the rank of admiral, which he attained in 1755, was ordered to the Mediterranean to relieve the garrison of Fort St Philip, which was still holding out. The squadron was not very well manned, and Byng was in

## particular much aggrieved because his marines were landed to make room for

the soldiers who were to reinforce the garrison, and he feared that if he met a French squadron after he had lost them he would be dangerously undermanned. His correspondence shows clearly that he left prepared for failure, that he did not believe that the garrison could hold out against the French force landed, and that he was already resolved to come back from Minorca if he found that the task presented any great difficulty. He wrote home to that effect to the ministry from Gibraltar. The governor of the fortress refused to spare any of his soldiers to increase the relief for Minorca, and Byng sailed on the 8th of May. On the 19th he was off Minorca, and endeavoured to open communications with the fort. Before he could land any of the soldiers, the French squadron appeared. A battle was fought on the following day. Byng, who had gained the weather gauge, bore down on the French fleet of M. de la Galissonière at an angle, so that his leading ships came into action unsupported by the rest of his line. The French cut the leading ships up, and then slipped away. When the flag captain pointed out to Byng that by standing out of his line he could bring the centre of the enemy to closer action, he declined on the ground that Thomas Mathews had been condemned for so doing. The French, who were equal in number to the English, got away undamaged. After remaining near Minorca for four days without making any further attempt to communicate with the fort or sighting the French, Byng sailed away to Gibraltar leaving Fort St Philip to its fate. The failure caused a savage outburst of wrath in the country. Byng was brought home, tried by court-martial, condemned to death, and shot on the 14th of March 1757 at Portsmouth. The severity of the penalty, aided by a not unjust suspicion that the ministry sought to cover themselves by throwing all the blame on the admiral, led in after time to a reaction in favour of Byng. It became a commonplace to say that he was put to death for an error of judgment. The court had indeed acquitted him of personal cowardice or of disaffection, and only condemned him for not having done his utmost. But it must be remembered that in consequence of many scandals which had taken place in the previous war the Articles of War had been deliberately revised so as to leave no punishment save death for the officer of any rank who did not do his utmost against the enemy either in battle or pursuit. That Byng had not done all he could is undeniable, and he therefore fell under the law. Neither must it be forgotten that in the previous war in 1745 an unhappy young lieutenant, Baker Phillips by name, whose captain had brought his ship into action unprepared, and who, when his superior was killed, surrendered the ship when she could no longer be defended, was shot by sentence of a court-martial. This savage punishment was approved by the higher officers of the navy, who showed great lenity to men of their own rank. The contrast had angered the country, and the Articles of War had been amended precisely in order that there might be one law for all.

The facts of Byng's life are fairly set out in Charnock's _Biogr. Nav._ vol. iv. pp. 145 to 179. The number of contemporary pamphlets about his case is very great, but they are of no historical value, except as illustrating the state of public opinion.

(D. H.)

BYNKERSHOEK, CORNELIUS VAN (1673-1743), Dutch jurist, was born at Middleburg in Zeeland. In the prosecution of his legal studies, and while holding the offices first of member and afterwards of president of the supreme court, he found the common law of his country so defective as to be nearly useless for practical purposes. This abuse he resolved to reform, and took as the basis of a new system the principles of the ancient Roman law. His works are very voluminous. The most important of them are _De foro legatorum_ (1702); _Observationes Juris Romani_ (1710), of which a continuation in four books appeared in 1733; the treatise _De Dominio Maris_ (1721); and the _Quaestiones Juris Publici_ (1737). Complete editions of his works were published after his death; one in folio at Geneva in 1761, and another in two volumes folio at Leiden in 1766.

BYRD, WILLIAM (1543-1623), English musical composer, was probably a member of one of the numerous Lincolnshire families of the name who were to be found at Lincoln, Spalding, Pinchbeck, Moulton and Epworth in the 16th century. According to Wood, he was "bred up to musick under Thomas Tallis." He was appointed organist of Lincoln cathedral about 1563, and on the 14th of September 1568 was married at St Margaret in the Close to Ellen or Julian Birley. On the 22nd of February 1569 he was sworn in as a member of the Chapel Royal, but he does not seem to have left Lincoln immediately. In the Chapel Royal he shared with Tallis the honorary post of organist, and on the 22nd [v.04 p.0897] of January 1575 the two composers obtained a licence for twenty-one years from Elizabeth to print music and music-paper, a monopoly which does not seem to have been at all remunerative. In 1575 Byrd and Tallis published a collection of Latin motets for five and six voices, printed by Thomas Vautrollier. In 1578 Byrd and his family were living at Harlington, Middlesex. As early as 1581 his name occurs among lists of recusants, and though he retained his post in the Chapel Royal he was throughout his life a Catholic. About 1579 he set a three-part song in Thomas Legge's Latin play _Ricardus Tertius_. In 1588 he published _Psalmes, Sonets and Songs of Sadnes and Pietie, _and in the same year contributed two madrigals to Nicolas Yonge's _Musica Transalpina_. In 1589 appeared _Songs of Sundrie Natures_, a second edition of which was issued in 1610. In the same year he published _Liber Primus Sacrarum Cantionum_, a second series of which was brought out in 1591. In 1590 two madrigals by Byrd were included in Thomas Watson's _First Sett of Italian Madrigalls Englished_; one of these seems to have been sung before Queen Elizabeth on her visit to Lord Hertford at Elvetham in 1591. In April 1592 Byrd was still living at Harlington, but about 1593 he became possessed of the remainder of a lease of Stondon Place, Essex, a farm of some 200 acres, belonging to William Shelley, who was shortly afterwards convicted of high treason. The property was sequestrated, and on the 15th of July 1595 Byrd obtained a crown lease of it for the lives of his eldest son Christopher and his daughters Elizabeth and Rachel. On the death of Shelley his son bought back his estates (in 1604), whereupon his widow attempted to oust Byrd from Stondon Place, on the ground that it formed part of her jointure. Byrd was upheld in his possession of the property by James I. (_Calendar of State Papers, Dom. Series_, James I. add. series, vol. xxxvi.), but Mrs Shelley persevered in her suit, apparently until her death in 1609. In the following year the matter was settled for a time by Byrd's buying Stondon Place in the names of John and Thomas Petre, part of the property being charged with a payment to Byrd of £20 for his life, with remainder to his second son Thomas. Throughout this long suit Byrd, though in possession of property which had been confiscated from a recusant and actually taking part as a member of the Chapel Royal at the coronation of James I., had been excommunicated since 1598, while from 1605 until 1612, and possibly later, he was regularly presented before the archidiaconal court of Essex as a Catholic. In 1603 Easte published a work (no copies of which are known to exist) entitled _Medulla Musicke. Sucked out of the sappe of two_ [_of_] _the most famous Musitians that ever were in this land, namely Master Wylliam Byrd ... and Master Alphonso Ferabosco ... either of whom having made 40tie severall waies (without contention), showing most rare and intricate skill in 2 partes in one upon the playne song Miserere_. In 1607 appeared two books of _Gradualia_, a second edition of which was issued in 1610. In the following year he published _Psalmes, Songs and Sonnets; some solemne, others joyfull, framed to the life of the Words_. Probably in the same year was issued _Parthenia_, a collection of virginal music, in which Byrd was associated with Bull and Orlando Gibbons. The last work to which he contributed was Sir Thomas Leighton's _Teares or Lamentations of a Sorrowfull Soule_ (1614). His death took place on the 4th of July 1623. It is recorded in the _Cheque Book_ of the Chapel Royal as that of a "father of musicke." His will, dated the 15th of November 1622, shows that he remained a Catholic until the end of his life, and he expresses a desire that he may die at Stondon and be buried near his wife. From the same document it seems that his latter years had been embittered by a dispute with his eldest son, but that the matter was settled by an agreement with his daughter-in-law Catherine, to whom he left his property at Stondon, charged with the payment of £20 to his second son Thomas and £10 to his daughter Rachel, with remainder to his grandson Thomas and his second son of the same name. In 1635 the estate again came before the court of chancery, on the ground that the annuities had not been paid. The property seems about 1637 to have been let to one John Leigh, and in 1651 was held by a member of the Petre family. The committee for compounding with delinquents at that date allowed Thomas Byrd the annuity of £20 bequeathed by his father. Byrd's arms, as entered in the Visitation of Essex of 1634 _ex sigillo_ were three stags' heads cabossed, a canton ermine. His children were (1) Christopher, who married Catherine, daughter of Thomas Moore of Bamborough, and had a son, Thomas, living at Stondon in 1634; (2) Thomas; (3) Elizabeth, who married successively John Jackson and--Burdett; (4) Rachel, married (1)--Hook, by whom she had two children, William and Catherine, married to Michael Walton; in 1634 Rachel Hook had married (2) Edward Biggs; (5) Mary, married (1) Henry Hawksworth, by whom she had four sons, William, Henry, George and John; (2) Thomas Falconbridge. Anne Byrd, who is mentioned in the proceedings _Shelley_ v. _Byrd_ (_Exchequer Decrees_, 7 James I., series ii. vol. vii. fol. 294 and 328), was probably a fourth daughter who died young.

Besides the works already mentioned Byrd was the composer of three masses, for three, four and five voices respectively, which seem to have been published with some privacy about 1588. There exists a second edition (also undated) of the four-part mass; all three have recently appeared in modern editions, and increase Byrd's claim to rank as the greatest English composer of his age. In addition to his published works, a large amount still remains in MS., comprising nearly every kind of composition. The Fitzwilliam _Virginal Book_ contains a long series of interesting pieces for the virginal, and more still remains unpublished in Lady Neville's _Virginal Book_ and other contemporary collections. His industry was enormous, and though his work is unequal and the licences he allowed can hardly be defended on strict grounds, his Latin church music and his instrumental compositions entitle him to high rank among his contemporaries. As a madrigalist he was inferior to Morley, Wilbye and Gibbons, though even in this branch of his art he often displays great charm and individuality.

(W. B. S.*)

BYROM, JOHN (1692-1763), English poet, writer of hymns and inventor of a system of shorthand, was born at Kersal Cell, near Manchester, on the 29th of February 1692, the younger son of a prosperous merchant. He was educated at Merchant Taylors school, and at Trinity College, Cambridge, of which he became a fellow in 1714. His first poem, "Colin to Phoebe," a pastoral, appeared in the _Spectator_, No. 603. The heroine is said to have been Dr Bentley's daughter, Joanna, the mother of Richard Cumberland, the dramatist. After leaving the university Byrom went abroad, ostensibly to study medicine, but he never practised and possibly his errand was really political, for he was an adherent of the Pretender. He was elected a member of the Royal Society in 1724. On his return to London he married his cousin in 1721, and to support himself taught a new method of shorthand of his own invention, till he succeeded (1740) to his father's estate on the death of his elder brother. His diary gives interesting portraits and letters of the many great men of his time whom he knew intimately. He died on the 26th of September 1763. A collection of his poems was published in 1773, and he is included in Alexander Chalmers's _English Poets_. His system of shorthand was not published until after his death, when it was printed as _The Universal English Shorthand; or the way of writing English in the most easy, concise, regular and beautiful manner, applicable to any other language, but particularly adjusted to our own_ (Manchester, 1767).

The _Private Journal and Literary Remains of John Byrom, related by Richard Parkinson, D.D._, was published by the Chetham Society (1854-1857).

BYRON, GEORGE GORDON BYRON, 6TH BARON (1788-1824), English poet, was born in London at 16 Holles Street, Cavendish Square, on the 22nd of January 1788. The Byrons were of Norman stock, but the founder of the family was Sir John Byron, who entered into possession of the priory and lands of Newstead in the county of Nottingham in 1540. From him it descended (but with a bar-sinister) to a great-grandson, John (1st Baron) Byron (_q.v._), a Cavalier general, who was raised to the peerage in 1643. The first Lord Byron died childless, and was succeeded by his brother Richard, the great-grandfather of William, the 5th lord, who outlived son and grandson, and was [v.04 p.0898] succeeded by his great-nephew, the poet. Admiral the Hon. John Byron (_q.v._) was the poet's grandfather. His eldest son, Captain John Byron, the poet's father, was a libertine by choice and in an eminent degree. He caused to be divorced, and married (1779) as his first wife, the marchioness of Carmarthen (born Amelia D'Arcy), Baroness Conyers in her own right. One child of the marriage survived, the Hon. Augusta Byron (1783-1851), the poet's half-sister, who, in 1807, married her first cousin, Colonel George Leigh. His second marriage to Catherine Gordon (b. 1765) of Gight in Aberdeenshire took place at Bath on the 13th of May 1785. He is said to have squandered the fortunes of both wives. It is certain that Gight was sold to pay his debts (1786), and that the sole provision for his wife was a settlement of £3000. It was an unhappy marriage. There was an attempt at living together in France, and, when this failed, Mrs Byron returned to Scotland. On her way thither she gave birth to a son, christened George Gordon after his maternal grandfather, who was descended from Sir William Gordon of Gight, grandson of James I. of Scotland. After a while her husband rejoined her, but went back to France and died at Valenciennes on the 2nd of August 1791. His wife was not a bad woman, but she was not a good mother. Vain and capricious, passionate and self-indulgent, she mismanaged her son from his infancy, now provoking him by her foolish fondness, and now exciting his contempt by her paroxysms of impotent rage. She neither looked nor spoke like a gentlewoman; but in the conduct of her affairs she was praiseworthy. She hated and avoided debt, and when relief came (a civil list pension of £300 a year) she spent most of it upon her son. Fairly well educated, she was not without a taste for books, and her letters are sensible and to the point. But the violence of her temper was abnormal. Her father committed suicide, and it is possible that she inherited a tendency to mental derangement. If Byron owed anything to his parents it was a plea for pardon.

The poet's first years were spent in lodgings at Aberdeen. From 1794 to 1798 he attended the grammar school, "threading all classes" till he reached the fourth. It was a good beginning, a solid foundation, enabling him from the first to keep a hand over his talents and to turn them to a set purpose. He was lame from his birth. His right leg and foot, possibly both feet, were contracted by infantile paralysis, and, to strengthen his muscles, his mother sent him in the summers of 1796, 1797 to a farm house on Deeside. He walked with difficulty, but he wandered at will, soothed and inspired by the grandeur of the scenery. To his Scottish upbringing he owed his love of mountains, his love and knowledge of the Bible, and too much Calvinism for faith or unfaith in Christianity. The death of his great-uncle (May 19, 1798) placed him in possession of the title and estates. Early in the autumn Mrs Byron travelled south with her son and his nurse, and for a time made her home at Newstead Abbey. Byron was old enough to know what had befallen him. "It was a change from a shabby Scotch flat to a palace," a half-ruined palace, indeed, but his very own. It was a proud moment, but in a few weeks he was once more in lodgings. The shrunken leg did not improve, and acting on bad advice his mother entrusted him to the care of a quack named Lavender, truss-maker to the general hospital at Nottingham. His nurse who was in charge of him maltreated him, and the quack tortured him to no purpose. At his own request he read Virgil and Cicero with a tutor.

In August 1799 he was sent to a preparatory school at Dulwich. The master, Dr Glennie, perceived that the boy liked reading for its own sake and gave him the free run of his library. He read a set of the _British Poets_ from beginning to end more than once. This, too, was an initiation and a preparation. He remained at Dulwich till April 1801, when, on his mother's intervention, he was sent to Harrow. His school days, 1801-1805, were fruitful in two respects. He learned enough Latin and Greek to make him a classic, if not a classical scholar, and he made friends with his equals and superiors. He learned something of his own worth and of the worth of others. "My school-friendships," he says, "were with me passions." Two of his closest friends died young, and from Lord Clare, whom he loved best of all, he was separated by chance and circumstance. He was an odd mixture, now lying dreaming on his favourite tombstone in the churchyard, now the ring-leader in whatever mischief was afoot. He was a "record" swimmer, and, in spite of his lameness, enough of a cricketer to play for his school at Lord's, and yet he found time to read and master standard works of history and biography, and to acquire more general knowledge than boys and masters put together.

In the midsummer of 1803, when he was in his sixteenth year, he fell in love, once for all, with his distant relative, Mary Anne Chaworth, a "minor heiress" of the hall and park of Annesley which marches with Newstead. Two years his senior, she was already engaged to a neighbouring squire. There were meetings half-way between Newstead and Annesley, of which she thought little and he only too much. What was sport to the girl was death to the boy, and when at length he realized the "hopelessness of his attachment," he was "thrown out," as he said, "alone, on a wide, wide sea." She is the subject of at least five of his early poems, including the pathetic stanzas, "Hills of Annesley," and there are allusions to his love story in _Childe Harold_ (c. i _s.v._), and in "The Dream" (1816).

Byron went into residence at Trinity College, Cambridge, in October 1805. Cambridge did him no good. "The place is the devil," he said, and according to his own showing he did homage to the _genius loci_. But whatever he did or failed to do, he made friends who were worthy of his choice. Among them were the scholar-dandy Scrope Berdmore Davies, Francis Hodgson, who died provost of Eton, and, best friend of all, John Cam Hobhouse (afterwards Lord Broughton). And there was another friend, a chorister named Edleston, a "humble youth" for whom he formed a romantic attachment. He died whilst Byron was still abroad (May 1811), but not unwept nor unsung, if, as there is little doubt, the mysterious Thyrza poems of 1811, 1812 refer to his death. During the vacation of 1806, and in 1807 which was one "long vacation," he took to his pen, and wrote, printed and published most of his "Juvenile Poems." His first venture was a thin quarto of sixty-six pages, printed by S. and J. Ridge of Newark. The "advertisement" is dated the 23rd of December 1806, but before that date he had begun to prepare a second collection for the press. One poem ("To Mary") contained at least one stanza which was frankly indecent, and yielding to advice he gave orders that the entire issue should be thrown into the fire. Early in January 1807 an expurgated collection entitled _Poems on Various Occasions_ was ready for private distribution. Encouraged by two critics, Henry Mackenzie and Lord Woodhouselee, he determined to recast this second issue and publish it under his own name. _Hours of Idleness_, "by George Gordon Lord Byron, a minor," was published in June 1807. The fourth and last issue of _Juvenilia_, entitled _Poems, Original and Translated_, was published in March 1808.

_Hours of Idleness_ enjoyed a brief triumph. The _Critical_ and other reviews were "very indulgent," but the _Edinburgh Review_ for January 1808 contained an article, not, as Byron believed, by Jeffrey, but by Brougham, which put, or tried to put, the author and "his poesy" to open shame. The sole result was that it supplied fresh material and a new title for some rhyming couplets on "British Bards" which he had begun to write. A satire on Jeffrey, the editor, and Lord Holland, the patron of the _Edinburgh Review_, was slipped into the middle of "British Bards," and the poem rechristened _English Bards and Scotch Reviewers_ (published the 1st of March 1809).

In April 1808, whilst he was still "a minor," Byron entered upon his inheritance. Hitherto the less ruinous portions of the abbey had been occupied by a tenant, Lord Grey de Ruthven. The banqueting hall, the grand drawing-room, and other parts of the monastic building were uninhabitable, but by incurring fresh debts, two sets of apartments were refurnished for Byron and for his mother. Dismantled and ruinous, it was still a splendid inheritance. In line with the front of the abbey is the west front of the priory church, with its hollow arch, once a "mighty window," its vacant niches, its delicate Gothic mouldings. The abbey buildings enclose a grassy quadrangle [v.04 p.0899] overlooked by two-storeyed cloisters. On the eastern side are the state apartments occupied by kings and queens not as guests, but by feudal right. In the park, which is part of Sherwood Forest, there is a chain of lakes--the largest, the north-west, Byron's "lucid lake." A waterfall or "cascade" issues from the lake, in full view of the room where Byron slept. The possession of this lordly and historic domain was an inspiration in itself. It was an ideal home for one who was to be hailed as the spirit or genius of romance.

On the 13th of March 1809, he took his seat in the House of Lords. He had determined, as soon as he was of age, to travel in the East, but before he sought "another zone" he invited Hobhouse and three others to a house-warming. One of the party, C.S. Matthews, describes a day at Newstead. Host and guests lay in bed till one. "The afternoon was passed in various diversions, fencing, single-stick ... riding, cricket, sailing on the lake." They dined at eight, and after the cloth was removed handed round "a human skull filled with Burgundy." After dinner they "buffooned about the house" in a set of monkish dresses. They went to bed some time between one and three in the morning. Moore thinks that the picture of these festivities is "pregnant in character," and argues that there were limits to the misbehaviour of the "wassailers." The story, as told in _Childe Harold_ (c. I. s. v.-ix.), need not be taken too seriously. Byron was angry because Lord De La Warr did not wish him goodbye, and visited his displeasure on friends and "lemans" alike. May and June were devoted to the preparation of an enlarged edition of his satire. At length, accompanied by Hobhouse and a small staff of retainers, he set out on his travels. He sailed from Falmouth on the 2nd of July and reached Lisbon on the 7th of July 1809. The first two cantos of _Childe Harold's Pilgrimage_ contain a record of the principal events of his first year of absence.

The first canto describes Lisbon, Cintra, the ride through Portugal and Spain to Seville and thence to Cadiz. He is moved by the grandeur of the scenery, but laments the helplessness of the people and their impending fate. Talavera was fought and won whilst he was in Spain, but he is convinced that the "Scourge of the World" will prevail, and that Britain, "the fond ally," will display her blundering heroism in vain. Being against the government, he is against the war. History has falsified his politics, but his descriptions of places and scenes, of "Morena's dusky height," of Cadiz and the bull-fight, retain their freshness and their warmth.

Byron sailed from Gibraltar on the 16th of August, and spent a month at Malta making love to Mrs Spencer Smith (the "Fair Florence" of c. II. s. xxix.-xxxiii.). He anchored off Prevesa on the 28th of September. The second canto records a journey on horseback through Albania, then almost a _terra incognita_, as far as Tepeleni, where he was entertained by Ali Pacha (October 20th), a yachting tour along the shores of the Ambracian Gulf (November 8-23), a journey by land from Larnaki to Athens (December 15-25), and excursions in Attica, Sunium and Marathon (January 13-25, 1810).

Of the tour in Asia Minor, a visit to Ephesus (March 15, 1810), an excursion in the Troad (April 13), and the famous swim across the Hellespont (May 3), the record is to be sought elsewhere. The stanzas on Constantinople (lxxvii.-lxxxii.), where Byron and Hobhouse stayed for two months, though written at the time and on the spot, were not included in the poem till 1814. They are, probably, part of a projected third canto. On the 14th of July Hobhouse set sail for England and Byron returned to Athens.

Of Byron's second year of residence in the East little is known beyond the bare facts that he was travelling in the Morea during August and September, that early in October he was at Patras, having just recovered from a severe attack of malarial fever, and that by the 14th of November he had returned to Athens and taken up his quarters at the Franciscan convent. Of his movements during the next five months there is no record, but of his studies and pursuits there is substantial evidence. He learnt Romaic, he compiled the notes to the second canto of _Childe Harold_. He wrote (March 12) _Hints from Horace_ (published 1831), an imitation or loose translation of the _Epistola ad Pisones_ (Art of Poetry), and (March 17) _The Curse of Minerva_ (published 1815), a skit on Lord Elgin's deportation of the metopes and frieze of the Parthenon.

He left Athens in April, passed some weeks at Malta, and landed at Portsmouth (c. July 20). Arrived in London his first step was to consult his literary adviser, R.C. Dallas, with regard to the publication of _Hints from Horace_. Of _Childe Harold_ he said nothing, but after some hesitation produced the MS. from a "small trunk," and, presenting him with the copyright, commissioned Dallas to offer it to a publisher. Rejected by Miller of Albemarle Street, who published for Lord Elgin, it was finally accepted by Murray of Fleet Street, who undertook to share the profits of an edition with Dallas.

Meanwhile Mrs Byron died suddenly from a stroke of apoplexy. Byron set off at once for Newstead, but did not find his mother alive. He had but little affection for her while she lived, but her death touched him to the quick. "I had but one friend," he exclaimed, "and she is gone." Another loss awaited him. Whilst his mother lay dead in his house, he heard that his friend Matthews had been drowned in the Cam. Edleston and Wingfield had died in May, but the news had reached him on landing. There were troubles on every side. On the 11th of October he wrote the "Epistle to a Friend" ("Oh, banish care," &c.) and the lines "To Thyrza," which, with other elegies, were appended to the second edition of _Childe Harold_ (April 17, 1812). It was this cry of desolation, this open profession of melancholy, which at first excited the interest of contemporaries, and has since been decried as morbid and unreal. No one who has read his letters can doubt the sincerity of his grief, but it is no less true that he measured and appraised its literary significance. He could and did turn it to account.

Towards the close of the year he made friends with Moore. Some lines in _English Bards_, &c. (ii. 466-467), taunting Moore with fighting a duel with Jeffrey with "leadless pistol" had led to a challenge, and it was not till Byron returned to England that explanations ensued, and that the challenge was withdrawn. As a poet Byron outgrew Moore, giving back more than he had received, but the friendship which sprang up between them still serves Byron in good stead. Moore's _Life of Byron_ (1830) is no doubt a picture of the man at his best, but it is a genuine likeness. At the end of October Byron moved to London and took up his quarters at 8 St James's Street. On the 27th of February 1812 he made his first speech in the House of Lords on a bill which made the wilful destruction of certain newly invented stocking-frames a capital offence, speaking in defence of the riotous "hands" who feared that their numbers would be diminished by improved machinery. It was a brilliant speech and won the praise of Burdett and Lord Holland. He made two other speeches during the same session, but thenceforth pride or laziness kept him silent. _Childe Harold_ (4to) was published on Tuesday, the 10th of March 1812. "The effect," says Moore, "was ... electric, his fame ... seemed to spring, like the palace of a fairy king, in a night." A fifth edition (8vo) was issued on the 5th of December 1812. Just turned twenty-four he "found himself famous," a great poet, a rising statesman. Society, which in spite of his rank had neglected him, was now at his feet. But he could not keep what he had won. It was not only "villainous company," as he put it, which was to prove his "spoil," but the opportunity for intrigue. The excitement and absorption of one reigning passion after another destroyed his peace of mind and put him out of conceit with himself. His first affair of any moment was with Lady Caroline Lamb the wife of William Lamb, better known as Lord Melbourne, a delicate, golden-haired sprite, who threw herself in his way, and afterwards, when she was shaken off, involved him in her own disgrace. To her succeeded Lady Oxford, who was double his own age, and Lady Frances Wedderburn Webster, the "Ginevra" of his sonnets, the "Medora" of _The Corsair_.

His "way of life" was inconsistent with an official career, but there was no slackening of his poetical energies. In February 1813 he published _The Waltz_ (anonymously), he wrote and [v.04 p.0900] published _The Giaour_ (published June 5, 1813) and _The Bride of Abydos_ (published November 29, 1813), and he wrote _The Corsair_ (published February 1, 1814). The _Turkish Tales_ were even more popular than _Childe Harold_. Murray sold 10,000 copies of _The Corsair_ on the day of publication. Byron was at pains to make his accessories correct. He prided himself on the accuracy of his "costume." He was under no delusion as to the ethical or artistic value of these experiments on "public patience."

In the summer of 1813 a new and potent influence came into his life. Mrs Leigh, whose home was at Newmarket, came up to London on a visit. After a long interval the brother and sister met, and whether there is or is not any foundation for the dark story obscurely hinted at in Byron's lifetime, and afterwards made public property by Mrs Beecher Stowe (_Macmillan's Magazine_, 1869, pp. 377-396), there is no question as to the depth and sincerity of his love for his "one relative,"--that her well-being was more to him than his own. Byron passed the "seasons" of 1813, 1814 in London. His manner of life we know from his journals. Socially he was on the crest of the wave. He was a welcome guest at the great Whig houses, at Lady Melbourne's, at Lady Jersey's, at Holland House. Sheridan and Moore, Rogers and Campbell, were his intimates and companions. He was a member of the Alfred, of Watier's, of the Cocoa Tree, and half a dozen clubs besides. After the publication of _The Corsair_ he had promised an interval of silence, but the abdication of Napoleon evoked "An Ode," &c., in his dishonour (April 16); _Lara, a Tale_, an informal sequel to _The Corsair_, was published anonymously on August 6, 1814.

Newstead had been put up for sale, but pending the completion of the contract was still in his possession. During his last visit but one, whilst his sister was his guest, he became engaged to Miss Anna Isabella Milbanke (b. May 17, 1792; d. May 16, 1860), the only daughter of Sir Ralph Milbanke, Bart., and the Hon. Judith (born Noel), daughter of Lord Wentworth. She was an heiress, and in succession to a peerage in her own right (becoming Baroness Wentworth in 1856). She was a pretty girl of "a perfect figure," highly educated, a mathematician, and, by courtesy, a poetess. She had rejected Byron's first offer, but, believing that her cruelty had broken his heart and that he was an altered man, she was now determined on marriage. High-principled, but self-willed and opinionated, she believed that she held her future in her own hands. On her side there was ambition touched with fancy--on his, a wish to be married and some hope perhaps of finding an escape from himself. The marriage took place at Seaham in Durham on the 2nd of January 1815. Bride and bridegroom spent three months in paying visits, and at the end of March settled at 13 Piccadilly Terrace, London.

Byron was a member of the committee of management of Drury Lane theatre, and devoted much of his time to his professional duties. He wrote but little poetry. _Hebrew Melodies_ (published April 1815), begun at Seaham in October 1814, were finished and given to the musical composer, Isaac Nathan, for publication. _The Siege of Corinth_ and _Parisina_ (published February 7, 1816) were got ready for the press. On the 10th of December Lady Byron gave birth to a daughter christened Augusta Ada. To judge from his letters, for the first weeks or months of his marriage things went smoothly. His wife's impression was that Byron "had avowedly begun his revenge from the first." It is certain that before the child was born his conduct was so harsh, so violent, and so eccentric, that she believed, or tried to persuade herself, that he was mad.

On the 15th of January 1816 Lady Byron left London for her father's house, claimed his protection, and after some hesitation and consultation with her legal advisers demanded a separation from her husband. It is a matter of common knowledge that in 1869 Mrs Beecher Stowe affirmed that Lady Byron expressly told her that Byron was guilty of incest with his half-sister, Mrs Leigh; also that in 1905 the second Lord Lovelace (Lord Byron's grandson) printed a work entitled _Astarte_ which was designed to uphold and to prove the truth of this charge. It is a fact that neither Lady Byron nor her advisers supported their demand by this or any other charge of misconduct, but it is also a fact that Lord Byron yielded to the demand reluctantly, under pressure and for large pecuniary considerations. It is a fact that Lady Byron's letters to Mrs Leigh before and after the separation are inconsistent with a knowledge or suspicion of guilt on the part of her sister-in-law, but it is also a fact (see _Astarte_, pp. 142-145) that she signed a document (dated March 14, 1816) to the effect that any renewal of intercourse did not involve and must not be construed as a withdrawal of the charge. It cannot be doubted that Lady Byron's conviction that her husband's relations with his half-sister before his marriage had been of an immoral character was a factor in her demand for a separation, but whether there were other and what issues, and whether Lady Byron's conviction was founded on fact, are questions which have not been finally answered. Lady Byron's charge, as reported by Mrs Beecher Stowe and upheld by the 2nd earl of Lovelace, is "non-proven." Mr Robert Edgcome, in _Byron: the Last Phase_ (1909), insists that Mary Chaworth was the real object of Byron's passion, and that Mrs Leigh was only shielding her.

The separation of Lord and Lady Byron was the talk of the town. Two poems entitled "Fare Thee Well" and "A Sketch," which Byron had written and printed for private circulation, were published by _The Champion_ on Sunday, April 14. The other London papers one by one followed suit. The poems, more especially "A Sketch," were provocative of criticism. There was a balance of opinion, but politics turned the scale. Byron had recently published some pro-Gallican stanzas, "On the 'Star of the Legion of Honour,'" in the _Examiner_ (April 7), and it was felt by many that private dishonour was the outcome of public disloyalty. The Whigs defended Byron as best they could, but his own world, with one or two exceptions, ostracized him. The "excommunicating voice of society," as Moore put it, was loud and insistent. The articles of separation were signed on or about the 18th of April, and on Sunday, the 25th of April, Byron sailed from Dover for Ostend. The "Lines on Churchill's Grave" were written whilst he was waiting for a favourable wind. His route lay through the Low Countries, and by the Rhine to Switzerland. On his way he halted at Brussels and visited the field of Waterloo. He reached Geneva on the 25th of May, where he met by appointment at Dejean's Hôtel d'Angleterre, Shelley, Mary Godwin and Clare (or "Claire") Clairmont. The meeting was probably at the instance of Claire, who had recently become, and aspired to remain, Byron's mistress. On the 10th of June Byron moved to the Villa Diodati on the southern shore of the lake. Shelley and his party had already settled at an adjoining villa, the Campagne Montalègre. The friends were constantly together. On the 23rd of June Byron and Shelley started for a yachting tour round the lake. They visited the castle of Chillon on the 26th of June, and, being detained by weather at the Hôtel de l'Ancre, Ouchy, Byron finished (June 27-29) the third canto of _Childe Harold_ (published November 18), and began the _Prisoner of Chillon_ (published December 5, 1816). These and other poems of July-September 1816, _e.g._ "The Dream" and the first two acts of _Manfred_ (published June 16, 1817), betray the influence of Shelley, and through him of Wordsworth, both in thought and style. Byron knew that Wordsworth had power, but was against his theories, and resented his criticism of Pope and Dryden. Shelley was a believer and a disciple, and converted Byron to the Wordsworthian creed. Moreover he was an inspiration in himself. Intimacy with Shelley left Byron a greater poet than he was before. Byron passed the summer at the Villa Diodati, where he also wrote the _Monody on the Death of Sheridan_, published September 9, 1816. The second half of September was spent and devoted to "an excursion in the mountains." His journal (September 18-29), which was written for and sent to Mrs Leigh, is a great prose poem, the source of the word pictures of Alpine scenery in _Manfred_. His old friend Hobhouse was with him and he enjoyed himself, but at the close he confesses that he could not lose his "own wretched identity" in the "majesty and the power and the glory" of nature. Remorse was scotched, not [v.04 p.0901] killed. On the 6th of October Byron and Hobhouse started via Milan and Verona for Venice, which was reached early in November. For the next three years Byron lived in or near Venice--at first, 1816-1817, in apartments in the Frezzeria, and after January 1818 in the central block of the Mocenigo palace. Venice appealed both to his higher and his lower nature. He set himself to study her history, to understand her constitution, to learn her language. The sights and scenes with which Shakespeare and Otway, Schiller's _Ghostseer_, and Madame de Staël's _Corinne_ had made him familiar, were before his eyes, not dreams but realities. He would "repeople" her with her own past, and "stamp her image" on the creations of his pen. But he had no one to live for but himself, and that self he gave over to a reprobate mind. He planned and pursued a life of deliberate profligacy. Of two of his amours we learn enough or too much from his letters to Murray and to Moore--the first with his landlord's wife, Marianna Segati, the second with Margarita Cogni (the "Fornarina"), a Venetian of the lower class, who amused him with her savagery and her wit. But, if Shelley may be trusted, there was a limit to his candour. There is abundant humour, but there is an economy of detail in his pornographic chronicle. He could not touch pitch without being defiled. But to do him justice he was never idle. He kept his brains at work, and for this reason, perhaps, he seems for a time to have recovered his spirits and sinned with a good courage. His song of carnival, "So we'll go no more a-roving," is a hymn of triumph. About the middle of April he set out for Rome. His first halt was at Ferrara, which inspired the "Lament of Tasso" (published July 17, 1817). He passed through Florence, where he saw "_the_ Venus" (of Medici) in the Uffizi Gallery, by reedy Thrasymene and Term's "matchless cataract" to "Rome the Wonderful." At Rome, with Hobhouse as companion and guide, he stayed three weeks. He returned to Venice on the 28th of May, but shortly removed to a villa at Mira on the Brenta, some 7 m. inland. A month later (June 26) when memory had selected and reduced to order the first impressions of his tour, he began to work them up into a fourth canto of _Childe Harold_. A first draft of 126 stanzas was finished by the 29th of July; the 60 additional stanzas which made up the canto as it stands were written up to material suggested by or supplied by Hobhouse, "who put his researches" at Byron's disposal and wrote the learned and elaborate notes which are appended to the poem. Among the books which Murray sent out to Venice was a copy of Hookham Frere's _Whistlecraft_. Byron took the hint and produced _Beppo, a Venetian Story_ (published anonymously on the 28th of February 1818). He attributes his choice of the mock heroic _ottava-rima_ to Frere's example, but he was certainly familiar with Casti's _Novelle_, and, according to Stendhal, with the poetry of Buratti. The success of _Beppo_ and a growing sense that "the excellent manner of _Whistlecraft_" was the manner for him, led him to study Frere's masters and models, Berni and Pulci. An accident had led to a great discovery.

The fourth canto of _Childe Harold_ was published on the 28th of April 1818. Nearly three months went by before Murray wrote to him, and he began to think that his new poem was a failure. Meanwhile he completed an "Ode on Venice," in which he laments her apathy and decay, and contrasts the tyranny of the Old World with the new birth of freedom in America. In September he began _Don Juan_. His own account of the inception of his last and greatest work is characteristic but misleading. He says (September 9) that his new poem is to be in the style of _Beppo_, and is "meant to be a little quietly facetious about everything." A year later (August 12, 1819), he says that he neither has nor had a _plan_--but that "he had or has _materials_." By materials he means books, such as Dalzell's _Shipwrecks and Disasters by Sea_, or de Castelnau's _Histoire de la nouvelle Russie_, &c., which might be regarded as poetry in the rough. The dedication to Robert Southey (not published till 1833) is a prologue to the play. The "Lakers" had given samples of their poetry, their politics and their morals, and now it was his turn to speak and to speak out. He too would write "An Excursion." He doubted that _Don Juan_ might be "too free for these modest days." It _was_ too free for the public, for his publisher, even for his mistress; and the "building up of the drama," as Shelley puts it, was a slow and gradual process. Cantos I., II. were published (4to) on the 15th of July 1819; Cantos III., IV., V., finished in November 1820, were not published till the 8th of August 1821. Cantos VI.-XVI., written between June 1822 and March 1823, were published at intervals between the 15th of July 1823 and the 26th of March 1824. Canto XVII. was begun in May 1823, but was never finished. A fragment of fourteen stanzas, found in his room at Missolonghi, was first published in 1903.

He did not put all his materials into _Don Juan_. "Mazeppa, a tale of the Russian Ukraine," based on a passage in Voltaire's _Charles XII._, was finished by the 30th of September 1818 and published with "An Ode" (on Venice) on the 28th of June 1819. In the spring of 1819 Byron met in Venice, and formed a connexion with, an Italian lady of rank, Teresa (born Gamba), wife of the Cavaliere Guiccioli. She was young and beautiful, well-read and accomplished. Married at sixteen to a man nearly four times her age, she fell in love with Byron at first sight, soon became and for nearly four years remained his mistress. A good and true wife to him in all but name, she won from Byron ample devotion and a prolonged constancy. Her volume of _Recollections_ (_Lord Byron jugé par les témoins de sa vie_, 1869), taken for what it is worth, is testimony in Byron's favour. The countess left Venice for Ravenna at the end of April; within a month she sent for Byron, and on the 10th of June he arrived at Ravenna and took rooms in the Strada di Porto Sisi. The house (now No. 295) is close to Dante's tomb, and to gratify the countess and pass the time he wrote the "Prophecy of Dante" (published April 21, 1821). According to the preface the poem was a metrical experiment, an exercise in _terza rima_; but it had a deeper significance. It was "intended for the Italians." Its purport was revolutionary. In the fourth canto of _Childe Harold_, already translated into Italian, he had attacked the powers, and "Albion most of all" for her betrayal of Venice, and knowing that his word had weight he appeals to the country of his adoption to strike a blow for freedom--to "unite." It is difficult to realize the force or extent of Byron's influence on continental opinion. His own countrymen admired his poetry, but abhorred and laughed at his politics. Abroad he was the prophet and champion of liberty. His hatred of tyranny--his defence of the oppressed--was a word spoken in season when there were few to speak but many to listen. It brought consolation and encouragement, and it was not spoken in vain. It must, however, be borne in mind that Byron was more of a king-hater than a people-lover. He was against the oppressors, but he disliked and despised the oppressed. He was aristocrat by conviction as well as birth, and if he espoused a popular cause it was _de haut en bas_. His connexion with the Gambas brought him into touch with the revolutionary movement, and thenceforth he was under the espionage of the Austrian embassy at Rome. He was suspected and "shadowed," but he was left alone.

Early in September Byron returned to La Mira, bringing the countess with him. A month later he was surprised by a visit from Moore, who was on his way to Rome. Byron installed Moore in the Mocenigo palace and visited him daily. Before the final parting (October 11) Byron placed in Moore's hands the MS. of his _Life and Adventures_ brought down to the close of 1816. Moore, as Byron suggested, pledged the MS. to Murray for 2000 guineas, to be Moore's property if redeemed in Byron's lifetime, but if not, to be forfeit to Murray at Byron's death. On the 17th of May 1824, with Murray's assent and goodwill, the MS. was burned in the drawing-room of 50 Albemarle Street. Neither Murray nor Moore lost their money. The Longmans lent Moore a sufficient sum to repay Murray, and were themselves repaid out of the receipts of Moore's _Life of Byron_. Byron told Moore that the memoranda were not "confessions," that they were "the truth but not the whole truth." This, no doubt, was the truth, and the whole truth. Whatever they may or may [v.04 p.0902] not have contained, they did not explain the cause or causes of the separation from his wife.[1]

At the close of 1819 Byron finally left Venice and settled at Ravenna in his own apartments in the Palazzo Guiccioli. His relations with the countess were put on a regular footing, and he was received in society as her _cavaliere servente_. At Ravenna his literary activity was greater than ever. His translation of the first canto of Pulci's _Morgante Maggiore_ (published in the _Liberal_, No. IV., July 30, 1832), a laborious and scholarly achievement, was the work of the first two months of the year. From April to July he was at work on the composition of _Marino Faliero, Doge of Venice_, a tragedy in five acts (published April 21, 1821). The plot turns on an episode in Venetian history known as _La Congiura_, the alliance between the doge and the populace to overthrow the state. Byron spared no pains in preparing his materials. In so far as he is unhistorical, he errs in company with Sanudo and early Venetian chronicles. Moved by the example of Alfieri he strove to reform the British drama by "a severer approach to the rules." He would read his countrymen a "moral lesson" on the dramatic propriety of observing the three unities. It was an heroic attempt to reassert classical ideals in a romantic age, but it was "a week too late"; Byron's "regular dramas" are admirably conceived and finely worded, but they are cold and lifeless.

Eighteen additional sheets of the _Memoirs_ and a fifth canto of _Don Juan_ were the pastime of the autumn, and in January 1821 Byron began to work on his second "historical drama," _Sardanapalus_. But politics intervened, and little progress was made. He had been elected _capo_ of the "_Americani_," a branch of the Carbonari, and his time was taken up with buying and storing arms and ammunition, and consultations with leading conspirators. "The poetry of politics" and poetry on paper did not go together. Meanwhile he would try his hand on prose. A controversy had arisen between Bowles and Campbell with regard to the merits of Pope. Byron rushed into the fray. To avenge and exalt Pope, to decry the "Lakers," and to lay down his own canons of art, Byron addressed two letters to **** ****** (_i.e._ John Murray), entitled "Strictures on the Life and Writings of Pope." The first was published in 1821, the second in 1835.

The revolution in Italy came to nothing, and by the 28th of May, Byron had finished his work on _Sardanapalus_. The _Two Foscari_, a third historical drama, was begun on the 12th of June and finished on the 9th of July. On the same day he began _Cain, a Mystery_. _Cain_ was an attempt to dramatize the Old Testament; Lucifer's apology for himself and his arraignment of the Creator startled and shocked the orthodox. Theologically the offence lay in its detachment. _Cain_ was not irreverent or blasphemous, but it treated accepted dogmas as open questions. _Cain_ was published in the same volume with the _Two Foscari_ and _Sardanapalus_, December 19, 1821. The "Blues," a skit upon literary coteries and their patronesses, was written in August. It was first published in _The Liberal_, No. III., April 26, 1823, When _Cain_ was finished Byron turned from grave to gay, from serious to humorous theology. Southey had thought fit to eulogize George III. in hexameter verse. He called his funeral ode a "Vision of Judgment." In the preface there was an obvious reference to Byron. The "Satanic School" of poetry was attributed to "men of diseased hearts and depraved imaginations." Byron's revenge was complete. In his "Vision of Judgment" (published in _The Liberal_, No. I., October 15, 1822) the tables are turned. The laureate is brought before the hosts of heaven and rejected by devils and angels alike. In October Byron wrote _Heaven and Earth, a Mystery_ (_The Liberal_, No. II., January 1, 1823), a lyrical drama based on the legend of the "Watchers," or fallen angels of the Book of Enoch. The countess and her family had been expelled from Ravenna in July, but Byron still lingered on in his apartments in the Palazzo Guiccioli. At length (October 28) he set out for Pisa. On the road he met his old friend, Lord Clare, and spent a few minutes in his company. Rogers, whom he met at Bologna, was his fellow-traveller as far as Florence. At Pisa he rejoined the countess, who had taken on his behalf the Villa Lanfranchi on the Arno. At Ravenna Byron had lived amongst Italians. At Pisa he was surrounded by a knot of his own countrymen, friends and acquaintances of the Shelleys. Among them were E.J. Trelawny, Thomas Medwin, author of the well-known _Conversations of Lord Byron_ (1824), and Edward Elliker Williams. His first work at Pisa was to dramatize Miss Lee's _Kruitzner, or the German's Tale_. He had written a first act in 1815, but as the MS. was mislaid he made a fresh adaptation of the story which he rechristened _Werner, or the Inheritance_. It was finished on the 20th of January and published on the 23rd of November 1822. _Werner_ is in parts _Kruitzner_ cut up into loose blank verse, but it contains lines and passages of great and original merit. Alone of Byron's plays it took hold of the stage. Macready's "Werner" was a famous impersonation.

In the spring of 1822 a heavy and unlooked-for sorrow befell Byron. Allegra, his natural daughter by Claire Clairmont, died at the convent of Bagna Cavallo on the 20th of April 1822. She was in her sixth year, an interesting and attractive child, and he had hoped that her companionship would have atoned for his enforced separation from Ada. She is buried in a nameless grave at the entrance of Harrow church. Soon after the death of Allegra, Byron wrote the last of his eight plays, _The Deformed Transformed_ (published by John Hunt, February 20, 1824). The "sources" are Goethe's _Faust_, _The Three Brothers_, a novel by Joshua Pickersgill, and various chronicles of the sack of Rome in 1527. The theme or _motif_ is the interaction of personality and individuality. Remonstrances on the part of publisher and critic induced him to turn journalist. The control of a newspaper or periodical would enable him to publish what and as he pleased. With this object in view he entered into a kind of literary partnership with Leigh Hunt, and undertook to transport him, his wife and six children to Pisa, and to lodge them in the Villa Lanfranchi. The outcome of this arrangement was _The Liberal--Verse and Prose from the South_. Four numbers were issued between October 1822 and June 1823. _The Liberal_ did not succeed financially, and the joint menage was a lamentable failure. _Correspondence of Byron and some of his Contemporaries_ (1828) was Hunt's revenge for the slights and indignities which he suffered in Byron's service. Yachting was one of the chief amusements of the English colony at Pisa. A schooner, the "Bolivar," was built for Byron, and a smaller boat, the "Don Juan" re-named "Ariel," for Shelley. Hunt arrived at Pisa on the 1st of July. On the 8th of July Shelley, who had remained in Pisa on Hunt's account, started for a sail with his friend Williams and a lad named Vivian. The "Ariel" was wrecked in the Gulf of Spezia and Shelley and his companions were drowned. On the 16th of August Byron and Hunt witnessed the "burning of Shelley" on the seashore near Via Reggio. Byron told Moore that "all of Shelley was consumed but the _heart_." Whilst the fire was burning Byron swam out to the "Bolivar" and back to the shore. The hot sun and the violent exercise brought on one of those many fevers which weakened his constitution and shortened his life.

The Austrian government would not allow the Gambas or the countess Guiccioli to remain in Pisa. As a half measure Byron took a villa for them at Montenero near Leghorn, but as the authorities were still dissatisfied they removed to Genoa. Byron and Leigh Hunt left Pisa on the last day of September. On reaching Genoa Byron took up his quarters with the Gambas at the Casa Saluzzo, "a fine old palazzo with an extensive view over the bay," and Hunt and his party at the Casa Negroto with Mrs Shelley. Life at Genoa was uneventful. Of Hunt and Mrs Shelley he saw as little as possible, and though his still unpublished poems were at the service of _The Liberal_, he did little or nothing to further its success. Each number was badly received. Byron had some reason to fear that his popularity [v.04 p.0903] was on the wane, and though he had broken with Murray and was offering _Don Juan_ (cantos vi.-xii.) to John Hunt, the publisher of _The Liberal_, he meditated a "run down to Naples" and a recommencement of _Childe Harold_. There was a limit to his defiance of the "world's rebuke." Home politics and the congress of Verona (November-December 1822) suggested a satire entitled "The Age of Bronze" (published April 1, 1823). It is, as he said, "stilted," and cries out for notes, but it embodies some of his finest and most vigorous work as a satirist. By the middle of February (1823) he had completed _The Island; or Christian and his Comrades_ (published June 26, 1823). The sources are Bligh's _Narrative of the Mutiny of the Bounty_, and Mariner's _Account of the Tonga Islands_. Satire and tale are a reversion to his earlier method. The execution of _The Island_ is hurried and unequal, but there is a deep and tender note in the love-story and the recital of the "feasts and loves and wars" of the islanders. The poetic faculty has been "softened into feeling" by the experience of life.

When _The Island_ was finished, Byron went on with _Don Juan_. Early in March the news reached him that he had been elected a member of the Greek Committee, a small body of influential Liberals who had taken up the cause of the liberation of Greece. Byron at once offered money and advice, and after some hesitation on the score of health, determined "to go to Greece." His first step was to sell the "Bolivar" to Lord Blessington, and to purchase the "Hercules," a collier-built tub of 120 tons. On the 23rd of July the "Hercules" sailed from Leghorn and anchored off Cephalonia on the 3rd of August. The party on board consisted of Byron, Pietro Gamba, Trelawny, Hamilton Browne and six or seven servants. The next four months were spent at Cephalonia, at first on board the "Hercules," in the harbour of Argostoli and afterwards at Metaxata. The object of this delay was to ascertain the real state of affairs in Greece. The revolutionary Greeks were split up into parties, not to say factions, and there were several leaders. It was a question to which leader he would attach himself. At length a message reached him which inspired him with confidence. He received a summons from Prince Alexander Mavrocordato, a man of birth and education, urging him to come at once to Missolonghi, and enclosing a request from the legislative body "to co-operate with Mavrocordato in the organization of western Greece." Byron felt that he could act with a "clear conscience" in putting himself at the disposal of a man whom he regarded as the authorized leader and champion of the Greeks. He sailed from Argostoli on the 29th of December 1823, and after an adventurous voyage landed at Missolonghi on the 5th of January 1824. He met with a royal reception. Byron may have sought, but he did not find, "a soldier's grave." During his three months' residence at Missolonghi he accomplished little and he endured much. He advanced large sums of money for the payment of the troops, for repair and construction of fortifications, for the provision of medical appliances. He brought opposing parties into line, and served as a link between Odysseus, the democratic leader of the insurgents, and the "prince" Mavrocordato. He was eager to take the field, but he never got the chance. A revolt in the Morea, and the repeated disaffection of his Suliote guard prevented him from undertaking the capture of Epacto, an exploit which he had reserved for his own leadership. He was beset with difficulties, but at length events began to move. On the 18th of March he received an invitation from Odysseus and other chiefs to attend a conference at Salona, and by the same messenger an offer from the government to appoint him "governor-general of the enfranchised parts of Greece." He promised to attend the conference but did not pledge himself to the immediate acceptance of office. But to Salona he never came. "Roads and rivers were impassable," and the conference was inevitably postponed.

His health had given way, but he does not seem to have realized that his life was in danger. On the 15th of February he was struck down by an epileptic fit, which left him speechless though not motionless. He recovered sufficiently to conduct his business as usual, and to drill the troops. But he suffered from dizziness in the head and spasms in the chest, and a few days later he was seized with a second though slighter convulsion. These attacks may have hastened but they did not cause his death. For the first week of April the weather confined him to the house, but on the 9th a letter from his sister raised his spirits and tempted him to ride out with Gamba. It came on to rain, and though he was drenched to the skin he insisted on dismounting and returning in an open boat to the quay in front of his house. Two hours later he was seized with ague and violent rheumatic pains. On the 11th he rode out once more through the olive groves, attended by his escort of Suliote guards, but for the last time. Whether he had got his deathblow, or whether copious blood-letting made recovery impossible, he gradually grew worse, and on the ninth day of his illness fell into a comatose sleep. It was reported that in his delirium he had called out, half in English, half in Italian, "Forward--forward--courage! follow my example--don't be afraid!" and that he tried to send a last message to his sister and to his wife. He died at six o'clock in the evening of the 19th of April 1824, aged thirty-six years and three months. The Greeks were heartbroken. Mavrocordato gave orders that thirty-seven minute-guns should be fired at daylight and decreed a general mourning of twenty-one days. His body was embalmed and lay in state. On the 25th of May his remains, all but the heart, which is buried at Missolonghi, were sent back to England, and were finally laid beneath the chancel of the village church of Hucknall-Torkard on the 16th of July 1824. The authorities would not sanction burial in Westminster Abbey, and there is neither bust nor statue of Lord Byron in Poets' Corner.

The title passed to his first cousin as 7th baron, from whom the subsequent barons were descended. The poet's daughter Ada (d. 1852) predeceased her mother, but the barony of Wentworth went to her heirs. She was the first wife of Baron King, who in 1838 was created 1st earl of Lovelace, and had two sons (of whom the younger, b. 1839, d. 1906, was 2nd earl of Lovelace) and a daughter, Lady Anne, who married Wilfrid S. Blunt (_q.v._). On the death of the 2nd earl the barony of Wentworth went to his daughter and only child, and the earldom of Lovelace to his half-brother by the 1st earl's second wife.

Great men are seldom misjudged. The world passes sentence on them, and there is no appeal. Byron's contemporaries judged him by the tone and temper of his works, by his own confessions or self-revelations in prose and verse, by the facts of his life as reported in the newspapers, by the talk of the town. His letters, his journals, the testimony of a dozen memorialists are at the disposal of the modern biographer. Moore thinks that Byron's character was obliterated by his versatility, his mobility, that he was carried away by his imagination, and became the thing he wished to be, or conceived himself as becoming. But his nature was not chameleon-like. Self-will was the very pulse of the machine. Pride ruled his years. All through his life, as child and youth and man, his one aim and endeavour was the subjection of other people's wishes to, his own. He would subject even fate if he could. He has two main objects in view, _glory_, in the French rather than the English use of the word, and passion. It is hard to say which was the strongest or the dearest, but, on the whole, within his "little life" passion prevailed. Other inclinations he could master. Poetry was often but not always an exaltation and a relief. He could fulfil his tasks in "hours of gloom." If he had not been a great poet he would have gained credit as a painstaking and laborious man of letters. His habitual temperance was the outcome of a stern resolve. He had no scruples, but he kept his body in subjection as a means to an end. In his youth Byron was a cautious spendthrift. Even when he was "cursedly dipped" he knew what he was about; and afterwards, when his income was sufficient for his requirements, he kept a hold on his purse. He loved display, and as he admitted, spent money on women, but he checked his accounts and made both ends meet. On the other hand, the "gift of continency" he did not possess, or trouble himself to acquire. He was, to use his own phrase, "passionate of body," and his desires were stronger than his will. There are points of Byron's character with regard to which opinion is divided. Candid he certainly was to the verge of brutality, but was he sincere? Was [v.04 p.0904] he as melancholy as his poetry implies? Did he pose as pessimist or misanthropist, or did he speak out of the bitterness of his soul? It stands to reason that Byron knew that his sorrow and his despair would excite public interest, and that he was not ashamed to exhibit "the pageant of a bleeding heart." But it does not follow that he was a hypocrite. His quarrel with mankind, his anger against fate, were perfectly genuine. His outcry is, in fact, the anguish of a baffled will. Byron was too self-conscious, too much interested in himself, to take any pleasures in imaginary woes, or to credit himself with imaginary vices.

Whether he told the whole truth is another matter. He was naturally a truthful man and his friends lived in dread of unguarded disclosures, but his communications were not so free as they seemed. There was a string to the end of the kite. Byron was kindly and generous by nature. He took pleasure in helping necessitous authors, men and women, not at all _en grand seigneur_, or without counting the cost, but because he knew what poverty meant, and a fellow-feeling made him kind. Even in Venice he set aside a fixed sum for charitable purposes. It was to his credit that neither libertinism nor disgrace nor remorse withered at its root this herb of grace. Cynical speeches with regard to friends and friendship, often quoted to his disadvantage, need not be taken too literally. Byron talked for effect, and in accordance with the whim of the moment. His acts do not correspond with his words. Byron rejected and repudiated bath Protestant and Catholic orthodoxy, but like the Athenians he was "exceedingly religious." He could not, he did not wish to, detach himself from a belief in an Invisible Power. "A fearful looking for of judgment" haunted him to the last.

There is an increasing tendency on the part of modern critics to cast a doubt on Byron's sanity. It is true that he inherited bad blood on both sides of his family, that he was of a neurotic temperament, that at one time he maddened himself with drink, but there is no evidence that his brain was actually diseased. Speaking figuratively, he may have been "half mad," but, if so, it was a derangement of the will, not of the mind. He was responsible for his actions, and they rise up in judgment against him. He put indulgence before duty. He made a byword of his marriage and brought lifelong sorrow on his wife. If, as Goethe said, he was "the greatest talent" of the 19th century, he associated that talent with scandal and reproach. But he was born with certain noble qualities which did not fail him at his worst. He was courageous, he was kind, and he loved truth rather than lies. He was a worker and a fighter. He hated tyranny, and was prepared to sacrifice money and ease and life in the cause of popular freedom. If the issue of his call to arms was greater and other than he designed or foresaw, it was a generous instinct which impelled him to begin the struggle.

With regard to the criticism of his works, Byron's personality has always confused the issue. Politics, religion, morality, have confused, and still confuse, the issue. The question for the modern critic is, of what permanent value is Byron's poetry? What did he achieve for art, for the intellect, for the spirit, and in what degree does he still give pleasure to readers of average intelligence? It cannot be denied that he stands out from other poets of his century as a great creative artist, that his canvas is crowded with new and original images, additions to already existing types of poetic workmanship. It has been said that Byron could only represent himself under various disguises, that Childe Harold and The Corsair, Lara and Manfred and Don Juan, are variants of a single personality, the egotist who is at war with his fellows, the generous but nefarious sentimentalist who sins and suffers and yet is to be pitied for his suffering. None the less, with whatever limitations as artist or moralist, he invented characters and types of characters real enough and distinct enough to leave their mark on society as well as on literature. These masks or replicas of his own personality were formative of thought, and were powerful agents in the evolution of sentiment and opinion. In language which was intelligible and persuasive, under shapes and forms which were suggestive and inspiring, Byron delivered a message of liberation. There was a double motive at work in his energies as a poet. He wrote, as he said, because "his mind was full" of his own loves, his own griefs, but also to register a protest against some external tyranny of law or faith or custom. His own countrymen owe Byron another debt. His poems were a liberal education in the manners and customs of "the gorgeous East," in the scenery, the art, the history and politics of Italy and Greece. He widened the horizon of his contemporaries, bringing within their ken wonders and beauties hitherto unknown or unfamiliar, and in so doing he heightened and cultivated, he "touched with emotion," the unlettered and unimaginative many, that "reading public" which despised or eluded the refinements and subtleties of less popular writers.

To the student of literature the first half of the 19th century is the age of Byron. He has failed to retain his influence over English readers. The knowledge, the culture of which he was the immediate channel, were speedily available through other sources. The politics of the Revolution neither interested nor affected the Liberalism or Radicalism of the middle classes. It was not only the loftier and wholesomer poetry of Wordsworth and of Tennyson which averted enthusiasm from Byron, not only moral earnestness and religious revival but the optimism and the materialism of commercial prosperity. As time went on, a severer and more intelligent criticism was brought to bear on his handiwork as a poet. It was pointed out that his constructions were loose and ambiguous, that his grammar was faulty, that his rhythm was inharmonious, and it was argued that these defects and blemishes were outward and visible signs of a lack of fineness in the man's spiritual texture; that below the sentiment and behind the rhetoric the thoughts and ideas were mean and commonplace. There was a suspicion of artifice, a questioning of the passion as genuine. Poetry came to be regarded more and more as a source of spiritual comfort, if not a religious exercise, yet, in some sort, a substitute for religion. There was little or nothing in Byron's poetry which fulfilled this want. He had no message for seekers after truth. Matthew Arnold, in his preface to _The Poetry of Byron_, prophesied that "when the year 1900 is turned, and our nation comes to recount the poetic glories in the century which has then just ended, her first names with her will be those of Byron and Wordsworth."

That prophecy still waits fulfilment, but without doubt there has been a reconsideration of Byron's place in literature, and he stands higher than he did, say, in 1875. His quarrel with orthodoxy neither alarms nor provokes the modern reader. Cynical or flippant turns of speech, which distressed and outraged his contemporaries, are taken as they were meant, for witty or humorous by-play. He is regarded as the herald and champion _revolt_. He is praised for his "sincerity and strength," for his single-mindedness, his directness, his audacity. A dispassionate criticism recognizes the force and splendour of his rhetoric. The "purple patches" have stood the wear and tear of time. Byron may have mismanaged the Spenserian stanza, may have written up to or anticipated the guide-book, but the spectacle of the bull-fight at Cadiz is "for ever warm," the "sound of revelry" on the eve of Waterloo still echoes in our ears, and Marathon and Venice, Greece and Italy, still rise up before us, "as from the stroke of an enchanter's wand." It was, however, in another vein that Byron achieved his final triumph. In _Don Juan_ he set himself to depict life as a whole. The style is often misnamed the mock-heroic. It might be more accurately described as humorous-realistic. His "plan was to have no plan" in the sense of synopsis or argument, but in the person of his hero to "unpack his heart," to avenge himself on his enemies, personal or political, to suggest an apology for himself and to disclose a criticism and philosophy of life. As a satirist in the widest sense of the word, as an analyser of human nature, he comes, at whatever distance, after and yet next to Shakespeare. It is a test of the greatness of _Don Juan_ that its reputation has slowly increased and that, in spite of its supposed immoral tendency, in spite of occasional grossness and voluptuousness, it has come to be recognized as Byron's masterpiece. _Don Juan_ will be read for its own sake, for its beauty, its humour, its faithfulness. It is a "hymn to the earth," but it is a human sequence to "its own music chaunted."

[v.04 p.0905] In his own lifetime Byron stood higher on the continent of Europe than in England or even in America. His works as they came out were translated into French, into German, into Italian, into Russian, and the stream of translation has never ceased to flow. The _Bride of Abydos_ has been translated into ten, _Cain_ into nine languages. Of _Manfred_ there is one Bohemian translation, two Danish, two Dutch, two French, nine German, three Hungarian, three Italian, two Polish, one Romaic, one Rumanian, four Russian and three Spanish translations. The dictum or verdict of Goethe that "the English may think of Byron as they please, but this is certain that they show no poet who is to be compared with him" was and is the keynote of continental European criticism. A survey of European literature is a testimony to the universality of his influence. Victor Hugo, Lamartine, Delavigne, Alfred de Musset, in France; Börne, Müller and Heine in Germany; the Italian poets Leopardi and Giusti; Pushkin and Lermontov among the Russians; Michiewicz and Slowacki among the Poles--more or less, as eulogists or imitators or disciples--were of the following of Byron. This fact is beyond dispute, that after the first outburst of popularity he has touched and swayed other nations rather than his own. The part he played or seemed to play in revolutionary politics endeared him to those who were struggling to be free. He stood for freedom of thought and of life. He made himself the mouthpiece of an impassioned and welcome protest against the hypocrisy and arrogance of his order and his race. He lived on the continent and was known to many men in many cities. It has been argued that foreigners are insensible to his defects as a writer, and that this may account for an astonishing and perplexing preference. The cause is rather to be sought in the quality of his art. It was as the creator of new types, "forms more real than living man," that Byron appealed to the artistic sense and to the imagination of Latin, Teuton or Slav. That "he taught us little" of the things of the spirit, that he knew no cure for the sickness of the soul, were considerations which lay outside the province of literary criticism. "It is a mark," says Goethe (_Aus meinem Leben: Dichtung und Wahrheit_, 1876, iii. 125), "of true poetry, that as a secular gospel it knows how to free us from the earthly burdens which press upon us, by inward serenity, by outward charm." Now of this "secular gospel" the redemption from "real woes" by the exhibition of imaginary glory, and imaginary delights, Byron was both prophet and evangelist.

Byron was 5 ft. 8 in. in height, and strongly built; only with difficulty and varying success did he prevent himself from growing fat. At five-and-thirty he was extremely thin. He was "very slightly lame," but he was painfully conscious of his deformity and walked as little and as seldom as he could. He had a small head covered and fringed with dark brown or auburn curls. His forehead was high and narrow, of a marble whiteness. His eyes were of a light grey colour, clear and luminous. His nose was straight and well-shaped, but "from being a little too thick, it looked better in profile than in front face." Moore says that it was in "the mouth and chin that the great beauty as well as expression of his fine countenance lay." The upper lip was of a Grecian shortness and the corners descending. His complexion was pale and colourless. Scott speaks of "his beautiful pale face--like a spirit's good or evil." Charles Matthews said that "he was the only man to whom he could apply the word beautiful." Coleridge said that "if you had seen him you could scarce disbelieve him... his eyes the open portals of the sun--things of light and for light." He was likened to "the god of the Vatican," the Apollo Belvidere.

The best-known portraits are: (1) Byron at the age of seven by Kay of Edinburgh; (2) a drawing of Lord Byron at Cambridge by Gilchrist (1808); (3) a portrait in oils by George Sanders (1809); (4) a miniature by Sanders (1812); (5) a portrait in oils by Richard Westall, R.A. (1813); (6) a portrait in oils (Byron in Albanian dress) by Thomas Phillips, R.A. (1813); (7) a portrait in oils by Phillips (1813); (8-9) a sketch for a miniature, and a miniature by James Holmes (1815); (10) a sketch by George Henry Harlow (1818); (11) a portrait in oils by Vincenzio Camuccini (in the Vatican) c. 1822; (12) a portrait in oils by W.H. West (1822); (13) a sketch by Count D'Orsay (1823). Busts were taken by Bertel Thorwaldsen (1817) and by Lorenzo Bartolini (1822). The statue (1829) in the library of Trinity College, Cambridge, is by Thorwaldsen after the bust taken in 1817.

AUTHORITIES.--The best editions of Lord Byron's poetical works are: (1) _The Works of Lord Byron with his Letters and Journals and his Life_, by Thomas Moore (17 vols., London, John Murray, 1832, 1833); (2) _The Works of Lord Byron_ (1 vol., 1837, reissued, 1838-1892); (3) _The Poetical Works of Lord Byron_ (6 vols., 1855); (4) _The Works of Lord Byron_, new, revised and enlarged edition, _Letters and Journals_, edited by G.E. Prothero, 6 vols., _Poetry_, edited by E.H. Coleridge (7 vols., 1898-1903); (5) _The Poetical Works of Lord Byron_, with memoir by E.H. Coleridge (1 vol., 1905).

The principal biographies, critical notices, memoirs, &c., are:--_Journey through Albania... with Lord Byron_, by J.C. Hobhouse (1812; reprinted in 2 vols., 1813 and 1855); _Memoirs of the Life and Writings of ... Lord Byron_ [by Dr John Watkins] (1822); _Letters on the Character and Poetical Genius of Lord Byron_, by Sir E. Brydges, Bart. (1824); _Correspondence of Lord Byron with a Friend_ (3 vols., Paris, 1824); _Recollections of the Life of Lord Byron_, by R.C. Dallas (1824); _Journal of the Conversations of Lord Byron_, by Capt. T. Medwin (1824); _Last Days of Lord Byron_, by W. Parry (1824); _Narrative of a Second Visit to Greece_, by E. Blaquiere (1825); _A Narrative of Lord Byron's Last Journey to Greece_, by Count Gamba (1825); _The Life, Writings, Opinions and Times of Lord Byron_ (3 vols., 1825); _The Spirit of the Age_, by W. Hazlitt (1825); _Memoir of the Life and Writings of Lord Byron_, by George Clinton (1826); _Correspondence of Byron and some of his Contemporaries_, by J.H. Leigh Hunt (2 vols., 1828); _Letters and Journals of Lord Byron, with Notices of his Life_, by Thomas Moore (2 vols., 1830); _The Life of Lord Byron_, by J. Galt (1830); _Conversations on Religion with Lord Byron_, by J. Kennedy (1830); _Conversations of Lord Byron with the Countess of Blessington_ (1834); _Critical and Historical Essays_, by T.B. Macaulay, i. 311-352 (1843); _Lord Byron jugé par les témoins de sa vie_ (1869), _My Recollections of Lord Byron_, by the Countess _Guiccioli_ (1869); _Lady Byron Vindicated, A History of the Byron Controversy_, by H. Beecher Stowe (1870); _Lord Byron, a Biography_, by Karl Elze (1872); _Kunst und Alterthum_, Goethe's _Sämmtliche Werke_ (1874), vol. xiii. p. 641; _Memoir of the Rev. F. Hodgson_ (2 vols., 1878); _The Real Lord Byron_, by J.C. Jeaffreson (2 vols., 1883); _A Selection_, &c., by A.C. Swinburne (1885); _Records of Shelley, Byron and the Author_, by E.J. Trelawny (1887); _Memoirs of John Murray_, by S. Smiles (2 vols., 1891); _Poetry of Byron_, chosen and arranged by Matthew Arnold (preface) (1892); _The Siege of Corinth_, edited by E. Kölbing (1893); _Prisoner of Chillon and other Poems_, edited by E. Kölbing (1896); _The Works of Lord Byron_, edited by W. Henley, vol. i. (1897); A. Brandl's "Goethes Verhältniss zu Byron," _Goethe Jahrbuch, zwanzigster Band_ (1899); _Main Currents in Nineteenth Century Literature_, by G. Brandis (6 vols., 1901-1905), translated from _Hauptströmungen der Literatur des neunzehnten Jahrhunderts_, 4 Bde. (Berlin 1872-1876); _Chambers's Cyclopaedia of English Literature_, vol. iii. (1903) art. "Byron," by T. Watts Dunton; _Studies in Poetry and Criticism_, by J. Churton Collins (1905); _Lord Byron, sein Leben_, &c., by Richard Ackermann; _Byron_, 3 vols. in the _Biblioteka velikikh pisatelei pod redaktsei_, edited by S.A. Vengesova (St Petersburg, 1906): a variorum translation; _Byron et le romantisme français_, by Edmond Estève (1907).

(E. H. C.)

[1] An anonymous work entitled _The Life, Writings, &c. of ... Lord Byron_ (3 vols., 1825) purports to give "Recollections of the Lately Destroyed Manuscript." To judge by internal evidence (see "The Wedding Day," &c. ii. 278-284) there is some measure of truth in this assertion, but the work as a whole is untrustworthy.

BYRON, HENRY JAMES (1834-1884), English playwright, son of Henry Byron, at one time British consul at Port-au-Prince, was born in Manchester in January 1834. He entered the Middle Temple as a student in 1858, with the intention of devoting his time to play-writing. He soon ceased to make any pretence of legal study, and joined a provincial company as an actor. In this line he never made any real success; and, though he continued to act for years, chiefly in his own plays, he had neither originality nor charm. Meanwhile he wrote assiduously, and few men have produced so many pieces of so diverse a nature. He was the first editor of the weekly comic paper, _Fun_, and started the short-lived _Comic Trials_. His first successes were in burlesque; but in 1865 he joined Miss Marie Wilton (afterwards Lady Bancroft) in the management of the Prince of Wales's theatre, near Tottenham Court Road. Here several of his pieces, comedies and extravaganzas were produced with success; but, upon his severing the partnership two years later, and starting management on his own account in the provinces, he was financially unfortunate. The commercial success of his life was secured with _Our Boys_, which was played at the Vaudeville from January 1875 till April 1879--a then unprecedented "run." _The Upper Crust_, another of his successes, gave a congenial opportunity to Mr J.L. Toole for one of his [v.04 p.0906] inimitably broad character-sketches. During the last few years of his life Byron was in frail health; he died in Clapham on the 11th of April 1884. H.J. Byron was the author of some of the most popular stage pieces of his day. Yet his extravaganzas have no wit but that of violence; his rhyming couplets are without polish, and decorated only by forced and often pointless puns. His sentiment had T.W. Robertson's insipidity without its freshness, and restored an element of vulgarity which his predecessor had laboured to eradicate from theatrical tradition. He could draw a "Cockney" character with some fidelity, but his _dramatis personae_ were usually mere puppets for the utterance of his jests. Byron was also the author of a novel, _Paid in Full_ (1865), which appeared originally in _Temple Bar_. In his social relations he had many friends, among whom he was justly popular for geniality and imperturbable good temper.

BYRON, JOHN BYRON, 1ST BARON (c. 1600-1652), English cavalier, was the eldest son of Sir John Byron (d. 1625), a member of an old Lancashire family which had settled at Newstead, near Nottingham. During the third decade of the 17th century Byron was member of parliament for the town and afterwards for the county of Nottingham; and having been knighted and gained some military experience he was an enthusiastic partisan of Charles I. during his struggle with the parliament. In December 1641 the king made him lieutenant of the Tower of London, but in consequence of the persistent demand of the House of Commons he was removed from this position at his own request early in 1642. At the opening of the Civil War Byron joined Charles at York. He was present at the skirmish at Powick Bridge; he commanded his own regiment of horse at Edgehill and at Roundway Down, where he was largely responsible for the royalist victory; and at the first battle of Newbury Falkland placed himself under his orders. In October 1643 he was created Baron Byron of Rochdale, and was soon serving the king in Cheshire, where the soldiers sent over from Ireland augmented his forces. His defeat at Nantwich, however, in January 1644, compelled him to retire into Chester, and he was made governor of this city by Prince Rupert. At Marston Moor, as previously at Edgehill, Byron's rashness gave a great advantage to the enemy; then after fighting in Lancashire and North Wales he returned to Chester, which he held for about twenty weeks in spite of the king's defeat at Naseby and the general hopelessness of the royal cause. Having obtained favourable terms he surrendered the city in February 1646. Byron took some slight part in the second Civil War, and was one of the seven persons excepted by parliament from all pardon in 1648. But he had already left England, and he lived abroad in attendance on the royal family until his death in Paris in August 1652. Although twice married Byron left no children, and his title descended to his brother Richard (1605-1679), who had been governor of Newark. Byron's five other brothers served Charles I. during the Civil War, and one authority says that the seven Byrons were all present at Edgehill.

BYRON, HON. JOHN (1723-1786), British vice-admiral, second son of the 4th Lord Byron, and grandfather of the poet, was born on the 8th of November 1723. While still very young, he accompanied Anson in his voyage of discovery round the world. During many successive years he saw a great deal of hard service, and so constantly had he to contend, on his various expeditions, with adverse gales and dangerous storms, that he was nicknamed by the sailors, "Foul-weather Jack." It is to this that Lord Byron alludes in his _Epistle to Augusta_:--

"A strange doom is thy father's son's, and past Recalling as it lies beyond redress, Reversed for him our grandsire's fate of yore, He had no rest at sea, nor I on shore."

Among his other expeditions was that to Louisburg in 1760, where he was sent in command of a squadron to destroy the fortifications. And in 1764 in the "Dolphin" he went for a prolonged cruise in the South Seas. In 1768 he published a _Narrative_ of some of his early adventures with Anson, which was to some extent utilized by his grandson in _Don Juan_. In 1769 he was appointed governor of Newfoundland. In 1775 he attained his flag rank, and in 1778 became a vice-admiral. In the same year he was despatched with a fleet to watch the movements of the Count d'Estaing, and in July 1779 fought an indecisive engagement with him off Grenada. He soon after returned to England, retiring into private life, and died on the 10th of April 1786.

BYSTRÖM, JOHAN NIKLAS (1783-1848), Swedish sculptor, was born on the 18th of December 1783 at Philipstad. At the age of twenty he went to Stockholm and studied for three years under Sergel. In 1809 he gained the academy prize, and in the following year visited Rome. He sent home a beautiful work, "The Reclining Bacchante," in half life size, which raised him at once to the first rank among Swedish sculptors. On his return to Stockholm in 1816 he presented the crown prince with a colossal statue of himself, and was entrusted with several important works. Although he was appointed professor of sculpture at the academy, he soon returned to Italy, and with the exception of the years from 1838 to 1844 continued to reside there. He died at Rome in 1848. Among Byström's numerous productions the best are his representations of the female form, such as "Hebe," "Pandora," "Juno suckling Hercules," and the "Girl entering the Bath." His colossal statues of the Swedish kings are also much admired.

BYTOWNITE, a rock-forming mineral belonging to the plagioclase (_q.v._) series of the felspars. The name was originally given (1835) by T. Thomson, to a greenish-white felspathic mineral found in a boulder near Bytown (now the city of Ottawa) in Ontario, but this material was later shown on microscopical examination to be a mixture. The name was afterwards applied by G. Tschermak to those plagioclase felspars which lie between labradorite and anorthite; and this has been generally adopted by petrologists. In chemical composition and in optical and other physical characters it is thus much nearer to the anorthite end of the series than to albite. Like labradorite and anorthite, it is a common constituent of basic igneous rocks, such as gabbro and basalt. Isolated crystals of bytownite bounded by well-defined faces are unknown.

(L. J. S.)

BYWATER, INGRAM (1840- ), English classical scholar, was born in London on the 27th of June 1840. He was educated at University and King's College schools, and at Queen's College, Oxford. He obtained a first class in Moderations (1860) and in the final classical schools (1862), and became fellow of Exeter (1863), reader in Greek (1883), regius professor of Greek (1893-1908), and student of Christ Church. He received honorary degrees from various universities, and was elected corresponding member of the Prussian Academy of Sciences. He is chiefly known for his editions of Greek philosophical works: _Heracliti Ephesii Reliquiae_ (1877); _Prisciani Lydi quae extant_ (edited for the Berlin Academy in the _Supplementum Aristolelicum_, 1886); Aristotle, _Ethica Nicomachea_ (1890), _De Arte Poetica_ (1898); _Contributions to the Textual Criticism of the Nicomachean Ethics_ (1892).

BYZANTINE ART

PLATE I.

[Illustration: INTERIOR OF THE HOLY WISDOM (S. SOPHIA), CONSTANTINOPLE. Sixth century, the dome was rebuilt in the tenth century. The metal balustrades, pulpits, and the large discs are Turkish.]

CAPITALS OF COLUMNS.

[Illustration: S. VITALI, RAVENNA. Sixth century.]

[Illustration: S. MARK, VENICE. Eleventh century.]

[Illustration: S. APOLLINARI, RAVENNA. Sixth century.]

PLATE II.

[Illustration: SMALL MEDIEVAL CATHEDRAL, ATHENS. _Photo: Emery Walker._]

[Illustration: INTERIOR OF ST. LUKE'S, NEAR DELPHI.

Showing a typical scheme of internal decoration. The lower parts of the walls are covered with marble, and the upper surfaces and vaults with mosaics and paintings. Eleventh century. _From a Drawing by Sidney Barnsley._]

BYZANTINE ART.[1] By "Byzantine art" is meant the art of Constantinople (sometimes called _Byzantium_ in the middle ages as in antiquity), and of the Byzantine empire; it represents the form of art which followed the classical, after the transitional interval of the early Christian period. It reached maturity under Justinian (527-565), declined and revived with the fortunes of the empire, and attained a second culmination from the 10th to the 12th centuries. Continuing in existence throughout the later middle ages, it is hardly yet extinct in the lands of the Greek Church. It had enormous influence over the art of Europe and the East during the early middle ages, not only through the distribution of minor works from Constantinople but by the reputation of its architecture and painting. Several buildings in Italy are truly Byzantine. It is difficult to set a time for the origin of the style. When Constantine founded new Rome the art was still classical, although it had even then gathered up many of the elements which were to transform its aspect. Just two hundred years later some of the most characteristic works of this style of art were being produced, such [v.04 p.0907] as the churches of St Sergius, the Holy Wisdom (St Sophia), and the Holy Apostles at Constantinople, and San Vitale at Ravenna. We may best set an arbitrary point for the demarcation of the new style midway between these two dates, with the practical separation of the eastern and western empires.

The style may be said to have arisen from the orientalization of Roman art, and itself largely contributed to the formation of the Saracenic or Mahommedan styles. As Choisy well says, "The history of art in the Roman epoch presents two currents, one with its source in Rome, the other in Hellenic Asia. When Rome fell the Orient returned to itself and to the freedom of exploring new ways. There was now a new form of society, the Christian civilization, and, in art, an original type of architecture, the Byzantine." It has hardly been sufficiently emphasized how closely the art was identified with the outward expression of the Christian church; in fact, the Christian element in late classical art is the chief root of the new style, and it was the moral and intellectual criticism that was brought to bear on the old material, which really marked off Byzantine art from being merely a late form of classic.

Hardly any distinction can be set up in the material contents of the art; it was at least for a period only simplified and sweetened, and it is this freshening which prepared the way for future development. It must be confessed, however, that certain influences darkened the style even before it had reached maturity; chief among these was a gloomy hierarchical splendour, and a ritual rigidity, which to-day we yet refer to, quite properly, as Byzantinism. Choisy sees a distinction in the constructive types of Roman and Byzantine architecture, in that the former covered spaces by concreted vaults built on centres, which approximated to a sort of "monolithic" formation, whereas in the Byzantine style the vaults were built of brick and drawn forward in space without the help of preparatory support. Building in this way, it became of the greatest importance that the vaults should be so arranged as to bring about an equilibrium of thrusts. The distinction holds as between Rome in the 4th century and Constantinople in the 6th, but we are not sufficiently sure that the concreted construction did not depend on merely local circumstances, and it is possible, in other centres of the empire where strong cement was not so readily obtainable, and wood was scarce, that the Byzantine _constructive_ method was already known in classical times. Choisy, following Dieulafoy, would derive the Byzantine system of construction from Persia, but this proposition seems to depend on a mistaken chronology of the monuments as shown by Perrot and Chipiez in their _History of Art in Persia_. It seems probable that the erection of brick vaulting was indigenous in Egypt as a building method. Strzygowski, in his recent elaborate examination of the art-types found at the palace of Mashita (Mschatta), a remarkable ruin discovered by Canon Tristram in Moab, of which the most important parts have now been brought to the new Kaiser Friedrich Museum in Berlin, shows that there are Persian ideas intermixed with Byzantine in its decoration, and there are also brick arches of high elliptical form in the structure. He seems disposed to date this work rather in the 5th than in the 6th century, and to see in it an intermediate step between the Byzantine work of the west and a Mesopotamian style, which he postulates as probably having its centre at Seleucia-Ctesiphon. From the examples brought forward by the learned author himself, it is safer as yet to look on the work as in the main Byzantine, with many Egyptian and Syrian elements, and an admixture, as has been said, of Persian ideas in the ornamentation. Egypt was certainly an important centre in the development of the Byzantine style.

The course of the transition to Byzantine, the first mature Christian style, cannot be satisfactorily traced while, guided by Roman archaeologists, we continue to regard Rome as a source of Christian art apart from the rest of the world. Christianity itself was not of Rome, it was an eastern leaven in Roman society. Christian art even in that capital was, we may say, an eastern leaven in Roman art. If we set the year 450 for the beginning of Byzantine art, counting all that went before as early Christian, we get one thousand years to the Moslem conquest of Constantinople (1453). This millennium is broken into three well-marked periods by the great iconoclastic schism (726-842) and the taking of Constantinople by the Crusaders in 1204. The first we may call the classical epoch of Byzantine art; it includes the mature period under Justinian (the central year of which we may put as 550), from which it declined until the settlement of the quarrel about images, 400 years in all, to, say, 850. The second period, to which we may assign the limits 850-1200, is, in the main, one of orientalizing influences, especially in architecture, although in MSS. and paintings there was, at one time, a distinct and successful classical revival. The interregnum had caused almost complete isolation from the West, and inspiration was only to be found either by casting back on its own course, or by borrowing from the East. This period is best represented by the splendid works undertaken by Basil the Macedonian (867-886) and his immediate successors, in the imperial palace, Constantinople. The third period is marked by the return of western influence, of which the chief agency was probably the establishment of Cistercian monasteries. This western influence, although it may be traced here and there, was not sufficient, however, to change the essentially oriental character of the art, which from first to last may be described as Oriental-Christian.

_Architecture._--The architecture of our period is treated in some detail in the article ARCHITECTURE; here we can only glance at some broad aspects of its development. As early as the building of Constantine's churches in Palestine there were two chief types of plan in use--the basilican, or axial, type, represented by the basilica at the Holy Sepulchre, and the circular, or central, type, represented by the great octagonal church once at Antioch. Those of the latter type we must suppose were nearly always vaulted, for a central dome would seem to furnish their very _raison d'être_. The central space was sometimes surrounded by a very thick wall, in which deep recesses, to the interior, were formed, as at the noble church of St George, Salonica (5th century?), or by a vaulted aisle, as at Sta Costanza, Rome (4th century); or annexes were thrown out from the central space in such a way as to form a cross, in which these additions helped to counterpoise the central vault, as at the mausoleum of Galla Placidia, Ravenna (5th century). The most famous church of this type was that of the Holy Apostles, Constantinople. Vaults appear to have been early applied to the basilican type of plan; for instance, at St Irene, Constantinople (6th century), the long body of the church is covered by two domes.

At St Sergius, Constantinople, and San Vitale, Ravenna, churches of the central type, the space under the dome was enlarged by having apsidal additions made to the octagon. Finally, at St Sophia (6th century) a combination was made which is perhaps the most remarkable piece of planning ever contrived. A central space of 100 ft. square is increased to 200 ft. in length by adding two hemicycles to it to the east and the west; these are again extended by pushing out three minor apses eastward, and two others, one on either side of a straight extension, to the west. This unbroken area, about 260 ft. long, the larger part of which is over 100 ft. wide, is entirely covered by a system of domical surfaces. Above the conchs of the small apses rise the two great semi-domes which cover the hemicycles, and between these bursts out the vast dome over the central square. On the two sides, to the north and south of the dome, it is supported by vaulted aisles in two storeys which bring the exterior form to a general square. At the Holy Apostles (6th century) five domes were applied to a cruciform plan, that in the midst being the highest. After the 6th century there were no churches built which in any way competed in scale with these great works of Justinian, and the plans more or less tended to approximate to one type. The central area covered by the dome was included in a considerably larger square, of which the four divisions, to the east, west, north and south, were carried up higher in the vaulting and roof system than the four corners, forming in this way a sort of nave [v.04 p.0908] and transepts. Sometimes the central space was square, sometimes octagonal, or at least there were eight piers supporting the dome instead of four, and the "nave" and "transepts" were narrower in proportion. If we draw a square and divide each side into three so that the middle parts are greater than the others, and then divide the area into nine from these points, we approximate to the typical setting out of a plan of this time. Now add three apses on the east side opening from the three divisions, and opposite to the west put a narrow entrance porch running right across the front. Still in front put a square court. The court is the _atrium_ and usually has a fountain in the middle under a canopy resting on pillars. The entrance porch is the _narthex_. The central area covered by the dome is the _solea_, the place for the choir of singers. Here also stood the _ambo_. Across the eastern side of the central square was a screen which divided off the _bema_, where the altar was situated, from the body of the church; this screen, bearing images, is the _iconastasis_. The altar was protected by a canopy or _ciborium_ resting on pillars. Rows of rising seats around the curve of the apse with the patriarch's throne at the middle eastern point formed the _synthronon_. The two smaller compartments and apses at the sides of the bema were sacristies, the _diaconicon_ and _prothesis_. The continuous influence from the East is strangely shown in the fashion of decorating external brick walls of churches built about the 12th century, in which bricks roughly carved into form are set up so as to make bands of ornamentation which it is quite clear are imitated from Cufic writing. This fashion was associated with the disposition of the exterior brick and stone work generally into many varieties of pattern, zig-zags, key-patterns, &c.; and, as similar decoration is found in many Persian buildings, it is probable that this custom also was derived from the East. The domes and vaults to the exterior were covered with lead or with tiling of the Roman variety. The window and door frames were of marble. The interior surfaces were adorned all over by mosaics or paintings in the higher parts of the edifice, and below with incrustations of marble slabs, which were frequently of very beautiful varieties, and disposed so that, although in one surface, the colouring formed a series of large panels. The choicer marbles were opened out so that the two surfaces produced by the division formed a symmetrical pattern resembling somewhat the marking of skins of beasts.

_Mosaics and Paintings._--The method of depicting designs by bringing together morsels of variously colored materials is of high antiquity. We are apt to think of a line of distinction between classical and Christian mosaics in that the former were generally of marble and the latter mostly of colored and gilt glass. But glass mosaics were already in use in the Augustan age, and the use of gilt tesserae goes back to the 1st or 2nd century. The first application of glass to this purpose seems to have been made in Egypt, the great glass-working centre of antiquity, and the gilding of tesserae may with probability be traced to the same source, whence, it is generally agreed, most of the gilt glass vessels, of which so many have been found in the catacombs, were derived. The earliest existing mosaics of a typically Christian character are some to be found at Santa Costanza, Rome (4th century). Other mosaics on the vaults of the same church are of marble and follow a classical tradition. It is probable that we have here the meeting-point of two art-currents, the indigenous and the eastern. In Rome, the great apse-mosaic of S. Pudenziana dates from about A.D. 400. The mausoleum of Galla Placidia, Ravenna, is incrusted within by mosaic work of the 5th century, and most probably the dome mosaics of the church of St George, Salonica, are also of this period. Of the 6th century are many of the magnificent examples still remaining at Ravenna, portions of the original incrustation of St Sophia, Constantinople, those of the basilica at Parenzo, on the Gulf of Istria, and of St Catherines, Sinai. An interesting mosaic which is probably of this period, and has only recently been described, is at the small church of Keti in Cyprus. This, which may be the only Byzantine mosaic in the British dominions, fills the conch of a tiny apse, but is none the less of great dignity. In the centre is a figure of the Virgin with the Holy Child in her arms standing between two angels who hold disks marked with the sign [CHI]. They are named Michael and Gabriel. Another mosaic of this period brought from Ravenna to Germany two generations ago has been recently almost rediscovered, and set up in the new Museum of Decorative Art in Berlin. In this, a somewhat similar composition fills the conch of the apse, but here it is the Risen Christ who stands between the two archangels. Above, in a broad strip, a frieze of angels blowing trumpets stand on the celestial sea on either hand of the Enthroned Majesty.

Such mosaics flowed out widely over the Christian world trom its art centres, as far east as Sanâ, the capital of Yemen, as far north as Kiev in Russia, and Aachen in Germany, and as far west as Paris, and continued in time for a thousand years without break in the tradition save by the iconoclastic dispute. The finest late example is the well-known "mosaic-church" (the Convent of the Saviour) at Constantinople, a work of the 14th century.

The single figures were from the first, and for the most part, treated with an axial symmetry. Almost all are full front; only occasionally will one, like the announcing angel, be drawn with a three-quarter face. The features are thus kept together on the general map of the face. In the same way the details of a tree will be collected on a simple including form which makes a sort of mat for them. Groups, similarly, are closely gathered up into masses of balanced form, and such masses are arranged with strict regard for general symmetry. "The art," as Bayet says, "in losing something of life and liberty became so much the better fitted for the decoration of great edifices." The technical means were just as much simplified, and only a few frank colours were made sufficient, by skilful juxtaposition, to do all that was required of them. The fine pure blue, or bright gold, backgrounds on which the figures were spaced, as well as the broken surface incidental to the process, created an atmosphere which harmonized all together. At St Sophia there were literally acres of such mosaics, and they seem to have been applied with similar profusion in the imperial palace.

Mosaic was only a more magnificent kind of painting, and painted design followed exactly the same laws; the difference is in the splendour of effect and in the solidity and depth of colour. Paintings, from the first, must have been of more grey and pearly hues. A large side chapel at the mosaic church at Constantinople is painted, and it is difficult to say which is really the more beautiful, the deep splendour of the one, or the tender yet gay colour of the other. The greatest thing in Byzantine art was this picturing of the interiors of entire buildings with a series of mosaics or paintings, filling the wall space, vaults and domes with a connected story. The typical character of the personages and scenes, the elimination of non-essentials, and the continuity of the tradition, brought about an intensity of expression such as may nowhere else be found. It is part of the limited greatness of this side of Byzantine art that there was no room in it for the gaiety and humour of the later medieval schools; all was solemn, epical, cosmic. When such stories are displayed on the golden ground of arches and domes, and related in a connected cycle, the result produces, as it was intended to produce, a sense of the universal and eternal. Beside this great power of co-ordination possessed by Byzantine artists, they created imaginative types of the highest perfection. They clothed Christian ideas with forms so worthy, which have become so diffused, and so intimately one with the history, that we are apt to take them for granted, and not to see in them the superb results of Greek intuition and power of expression. Such a type is the Pantocrator,--the Creator-Redeemer, the Judge inflexible and yet compassionate,--who is depicted at the zenith of all greater domes; such the Virgin with the Holy Child, enthroned or standing in the conchs of apses, all tenderness and dignity, or with arms extended, all solicitude; of her image the _Painter's Guide_ directs that it is to be painted with the "complexion the colour of wheat, hair and eyes brown, grand eyebrows, and beautiful eyes, clad in beautiful clothing, humble, beautiful and faultless"; such are the angels with their mighty [v.04 p.0909] wings, splendid impersonations of beneficent power; such are the prophets, doctors, martyrs, saints,--all have been fixed into final types.

We are apt to speak of the rigidity and fixity of Byzantine work, but the method is germane in the strictest sense to the result desired, and we should ask ourselves how far it is possible to represent such a serious and moving drama except by dealing with more or less unchangeable types. It could be no otherwise. This art was not a matter of taste, it was a growth of thought, cast into an historical mould. Again, the artists had an extraordinary power of concentrating and abstracting the great things of a story into a few elements or symbols. For example, the seven days of creation are each figured by some simple detail, such as a tree, or a flight of birds, or symbolically, as seven spirits; the flood by an ark on the waters. What the capabilities of such a method are, where invention is not allowed to wander into variety, but may only add intensity, may, for instance, be seen in representations of the Agony in the Garden. This subject is usually divided into three sections, each consecutive one showing, with the same general scene, greater darkness, an advance up the hill, and the figure of Christ more bowed. Another composition, the "Sleep (death) of the Virgin," is all sweetness and peace, but no less powerful. A remarkable invention is the _etomasia_, a splendid empty throne prepared for the Second Advent. The stories of the Old Testament are put into relation with the Gospel by way of type and anti-type. There are allegories: the anchorite life contrasted with the mad life of the world, the celestial ladder, &c., and fine impersonations, such as night and dawn, mercy and truth, cities and rivers, are frequently found, especially in MS. pictures.

A few general schemes may be briefly summarized. St Sophia has the Pantocrator in the middle of the dome, and four cherubim of colossal size at the four corners; on the walls below were angels, prophets, saints and doctors. On the circle of the apse was enthroned the Virgin. To the right and left, high above the altar, were two archangels holding banners inscribed "Holy, Holy, Holy." These last are also found at Nicaea, and at the monastery of St Luke. The church of the Holy Apostles had the Ascension in the central dome, and below, the Life of Christ. St Sophia, Salonica, also has the Ascension, a composition which is repeated on the central dome of St Mark's, Venice. In the eastern dome of the Venetian church is Christ surrounded by prophets, and, in the western dome, the Descent of the Holy Spirit upon the Apostles. A Pentecost similar to the last occupies the dome over the Bema of St Luke's monastery in Phocis; in the central dome of this church is the Pantocrator, while in a zone below stand, the Virgin to the east, St John Baptist to the west, and the four archangels, Michael, Gabriel, Raphael and Uriel, to the north and south. A better example of grandeur of treatment can hardly be cited than the paintings of the now destroyed dome of the little church of Megale Panagia at Athens, a dome which was only about 12 ft. across. At the centre was Christ enthroned, next came a series of nine semicircles containing the orders of the angels, seraphim, cherubim, thrones, dominations, virtues, powers, principalities, archangels and angels. Below these came a wide blue belt set with stars and the signs of the zodiac; to the east the sun, to the west the moon. Still below these were the winds, hail and snow; and still lower mountains and trees and the life on the earth, with all of which were interwoven passages from the last three Psalms, forming a Benedicite. After St Mark's, Venice, the completest existing scheme of mosaics is that of the church of St Luke; those of Daphne, Athens, are the most beautiful. A complete series of paintings exists in one of the monastic churches on Mount Athos. The Pantocrator is at the centre of the dome, then comes a zone with the Virgin, St John Baptist and the orders of the angels. Then the prophets between the windows of the dome and the four evangelists in the pendentives. On the rest of the vaults is the life of Christ, ending at the Bema with the Ascension; in the apse is the Virgin above, the Divine Liturgy lower, and the four doctors of the church below. All the walls are painted as well as the vaults. The mosaics overflowed from the interiors on to the external walls of buildings even in Roman days, and the same practice was continued on churches. The remains of an external mosaic of the 6th century exist on the west façade of the basilica at Parenzo. Christ is there seated amongst the seven candlesticks, and adored by saints. At the basilica at Bethlehem the gable end was appropriately covered with a mosaic of the Nativity, also a work of the age of Justinian. In Rome, St Peter's and other churches had mosaics on the façades; a tradition represented, in a small way, at San Miniato, Florence. At Constantinople, according to Clavigo, the Spanish ambassador who visited that city about 1400, the church of St Mary of the Fountain had its exterior richly worked in gold, azure and other colours; and it seems almost necessary to believe that the bare front of the narthex of St Sophia was intended to be decorated in a similar manner. In Damascus the courtyard of the Great Mosque seems to have been adorned with mosaics; photographs taken before the fire in 1893 show patches on the central gable in some of the spandrels of the side colonnade and on the walls of the isolated octagonal treasury. The mosaics here were of Byzantine workmanship, and their effect, used in such abundance, must have been of great splendour. In Jerusalem the mosque of Omar also had portions of the exterior covered with mosaics. We may imagine that such external decorations of the churches, where a few solemn figures told almost as shadows on the golden background brightly reflecting the sun, must have been even more glorious than the imagery of their interiors.

Painted books were hardly different in their style from the paintings on the walls. Of the MSS. the Cottonian Genesis, now only a collection of charred fragments, was an early example. The great _Natural History_ of Dioscorides of Vienna (c. 500) and the Joshua Roll of the Vatican, which have both been lately published in perfect facsimile, are magnificent works. In the former the plants are drawn with an accuracy of observation which was to disappear for a thousand years. The latter shows a series of drawings delicately tinted in pinks and blues. Many of the compositions contain classical survivals, like personified rivers.

In some of the miniatures of the later school of the art the classical revival of the 10th century was especially marked. Still later others show a very definite Persian influence in their ornamentation, where intricate arabesques almost of the style of eastern rugs are found.

_The Plastic Art._--If painting under the new conditions entered on a fresh course of power and conquest, if it set itself successfully to provide an imagery for new and intense thought, sculpture, on the other hand, seems to have withered away as it became removed from the classic stock. Already in the pre-Constantinian epoch of classical art sculpture had become strangely dry and powerless, and as time went on the traditions of modelling appear to have been forgotten. Two points of recent criticism may be mentioned here. It has been shown that the porphyry images of warriors at the southwest angle of St Mark's, Venice, are of Egyptian origin and are of late classical tradition. The celebrated bronze St Peter at Rome is now assigned to the 13th century. Not only did statue-making become nearly a lost art, but architectural carvings ceased to be seen as _modelled form_, and a new system of relief came into use. Ornament, instead of being gathered up into forcible projections relieved against retiring planes, and instead of having its surfaces modulated all over with delicate gradations of shade, was spread over a given space in an even fretwork. Such a highly developed member as the capital, for instance, was thought of first as a simple, solid form, usually more or less the shape of a bowl, and the carving was spread out over the general surface, the background being sunk into sharply defined spaces of shadow, all about the same size. Often the background was so deeply excavated that it ceased to be a plane supporting the relieved parts, but passed wholly into darkness. Strzygowski has given to this process the name of the "deep-dark" ground. A further step was to relieve the upper fretwork of carving from the ground altogether in certain places by cutting away the sustaining portions.

[v.04 p.0910] The simplicity, the definition and crisp sharpness of some of the results are entirely delightful. The bluntness and weariness of many of the later modelled Roman forms disappear in the new energy of workmanship which was engaged in exploring a fresh field of beauty. These brightly illuminated lattices of carved ornament seem to hold within them masses of cold shadow. Beautiful as was this method of architectural adornment, it must be allowed that it was, in essence, much more elementary than the school of modelled form. All such carvings were usually brightly coloured and gilt, and it seems probable that the whole was considered rather as a colour arrangement than as sculpture proper.

Plaster work, again, an art on which wonderful skill was lavished in Rome, became under the Byzantines extremely rude. Many good examples of this work exist at San Vitale and Sant' Apollinare in Classe at Ravenna, also at Parenzo, and at St Sophia, Constantinople. Later examples of plaster work of Byzantine tradition are to be found at Cividale, and at Sant' Ambrogio, Milan, where the tympana of the well-known baldachin are of this material, and contain modelled figures.

Coins and medallions of even the best period of Byzantine art prove what a deep abyss separates them from the power over modelled relief shown in classical examples. The sculptural art is best displayed by ivory carvings, although this is more to be attributed to their pictorial quality than to a feeling for modelling.

_Metal Work, Ivories and Textiles._--One of the greatest of Byzantine arts is the goldsmith's. This absorbed so much from Persian and Oriental schools as to become semi-barbaric. Under Justinian the transformation from Classical art was almost complete. Some few examples, like a silver dish from Cyprus in the British Museum, show refined restraint; on the other hand, the mosaic portraits of the emperor and Theodora show crowns and jewels of full Oriental style, and the description of the splendid fittings of St Sophia read like an eastern tale. Goldsmith's work was executed on such a scale for the great church as to form parts of the architecture of the interior. The altar was wholly of gold, and its ciborium and the iconastasis were of silver. In the later palace-church, built by Basil the Macedonian, the previous metals were used to such an extent that it is clear, from the description, that the interior was intended to be, as far as possible, like a great jewelled shrine. Gold and silver, we are told, were spread over all the church, not only in the mosaics, but in plating and other applications. The enclosure of the bema, with its columns and entablatures, was of silver gilt, and set with gems and pearls.

The most splendid existing example of goldsmith's work on a large scale is the _Paid d'Oro_ of St Mark's, Venice; an assemblage of many panels on which saints and angels are enamelled. The monastic church of St Catherine, Sinai, is entered through a pair of enamelled doors, and several doors inlaid with silver still exist. In these doors the ground was of gilt-bronze; but there is also record of silver doors in the imperial palace at Constantinople. The inlaid doors of St Paul Outside the Walls at Rome were executed in Constantinople by Stauricios, in 1070, and have Greek inscriptions. There are others at Salerno (c. 1080), but the best known are those at St Mark's, Venice. In all these the imagery was delineated in silver on the gilt-bronze ground. The earliest works of this sort are still to be found in Constantinople. The panels of a door at St Sophia bear the monograms of Theophilus and Michael (840). Two other doors in the narthex of the same church, having simpler ornamentation of inlaid silver, are probably as early as the time of Justinian.

The process of enamelling dates from late classical times and Venturi supposes that it was invented in Alexandria. The cloisonné process, characteristic of Byzantine enamels, is thought by Kondakov to be derived from Persia, and to its study he has devoted a splendid volume. One of the finest examples of this cloisonné is the reliquary at Limburg on which the enthroned Christ appears between St Mary and St John in the midst of the twelve apostles. An inscription tells that it was executed for the emperors Constantine and Romanus (948-959).

A reliquary lately added to the J. Pierpont Morgan collection at South Kensington is of the greatest beauty in regard to the colour and clearness of the enamel. The cover, which is only about 4½ by 3 ins., has in the centre a crucifixion with St Mary and St John to the right and left, while around are busts of the apostles. Christ is vested in a tunic. The ground colour is the green of emerald, the rest mostly blue and white. The cloisons are of gold. Two other Byzantine enamels are in the permanent collection at the Victoria and Albert Museum: one is a cross with the crucifixion on a background of the same emerald enamel; the other is a small head of St Paul of remarkably fine workmanship.

Ivory-working was another characteristic Byzantine art, although, like so many others it had its origin in antiquity. One of the earliest ivories of the Byzantine type is the diptych at Monza, showing a princess and a boy, supposed to be Galla Placidia and Valentinian III. This already shows the broad, flattened treatment which seems to mark the ivory work of the East. The majestic archangel of the British Museum, one of the largest panels known, is probably of the 5th century, and almost certainly, as Strzygowski has shown, of Syrian origin. Design and execution are equally fine. The drawing of the body, and the modelling of the drapery, are accomplished and classical. Only the full front pose, the balanced disposition of the large wings, and the intense outlook of the face, give it the Byzantine type.

Ivory, like gold-work and enamel, was pressed into the adornment of architectural works. The ambo erected by Justinian at St Sophia was in part covered by ivory panels set into the marble. The best existing specimen of this kind of work is the celebrated ivory throne at Ravenna. This masterpiece, which resembles a large, high-backed chair, is entirely covered with sculptured ivory, delicate carvings of scriptural subjects and ornament. It is of the 6th century and bears the monogram of Bishop Maximian. It is probably of Egyptian or Syrian origin.

So many fragments of ivories have been discovered in recent explorations in Egypt that it is most likely that Alexandria, a fit centre for receiving the material, was also its centre of distribution. The weaving of patterned silks was known in Europe in the classical age, and they reached great development in the Byzantine era. A fragment, long ago figured by Semper, showing a classical design of a nereid on a sea-horse, is so like the designs found on many ivories discovered in Egypt that we may probably assign it to Alexandria. Such fabrics going back to the 3rd century have been found in Egypt which must have been one of the chief centres for the production of silk as for linen textiles. The Victoria and Albert Museum is

## particularly rich in early silks. One fine example, having rose-coloured

stripes and repeated figures of Samson and the lion, must be of the great period of the 6th century. The description of St Sophia written at that time tells of the altar curtains that they bore woven images of Christ, St Peter and St Paul standing under tabernacles upon a crimson ground, their garments being enriched with gold embroidery. Later the patterns became more barbaric and of great scale, lions trampled across the stuff, and in large circles were displayed eagles, griffins and the like in a fine heraldic style. From the origin of the raw material in China and India and the ease of transport, such figured stuffs gathered up and distributed patterns over both Europe and Asia. The Persian influence is marked. There is, for example, a pattern of a curious dragon having front feet and a peacock's tail. It appears on a silver Persian dish in the Hermitage Museum, it is found on the mixed Byzantine and Persian carvings of the palace of Mashita, and it occurs on several silks of which there are two varieties at the Victoria and Albert Museum, both of which are classed as Byzantine; it is difficult to say of many of these patterns whether they are Sassanian originals or Byzantine adaptations from them.

AUTHORITIES.--A very complete bibliography is given by H. Leclercq, _Manuel d'archéologie chrétienne_ (Paris, 1907). The current authorities for all that concerns Byzantine history or art [v.04 p.0911] are:--_Byzantinische Zeitschrift ..._ (Leipzig, 1892 seq.); _Oriens Christianus_ (Rome, 1900 seq.). See also Dom R.P. Cabrol, _Dictionnaire d'archéologie chrétienne_, &c. (Paris, 1902 seq.). The best general introduction is:--C. Bayet, _L'Art byzantin_ (Paris, 1883, new edition, 1904). See J. Strzygowski, _Orient oder Rom_ (Leipzig, 1901) and other works; Kondakov, _Les Émaux byz._ (1892), and other works; C. Diehl, _Justinien et la civilis. byz._ (Paris, 1901), and other works; G. Millet, _Le Monastère de Daphne_, &c. (Paris, 1899), and other works; L.G. Schlumberger, _L'Epopée byz._ &c. (1896 seq.); A. Michel, _Histoire de l'art_, vol. i. (Paris, 1905); H. Brockhaus, _Die Kunst in den Athos-Klostern_ (Leipzig, 1891); E. Molinier, _Histoire générale des arts_, &c. i., _Ivoires_ (Paris, 1896); O. Dalton, _Catalogue of Early Christian Antiquities...of the British Museum_ (1901); A. van Millingen, _Byzantine Constantinople_ (1899); Salzenberg, _Altchristliche Baudenkmaler_ &c. (Berlin, 1854); A. Choisy, _L'Art de bâtir chez les Byzantins_ (Paris, 1875); Couchand, _Églises byzantines en Grèce_; Ongania, _Basilica di S. Marco_; Texier and Pullan, _L'Architecture b. 73_ (1864); Lethaby and Swainson, _Sancta Sophia, Constantinople_ (1894); Schultz and Barnsley, _The Monastery of St Luke_, &c. (1890); L. de Beylié, _L'Habitation byz._ (Paris, 1903). For Syria: M. de Vogüé, _L'Architecture...dans la Syrie centrale_ (Paris, 1866-1877); H.C. Butler, _Architecture and other Arts_, &c. (New York, 1904). For Egypt: W.E. Crum, _Coptic Monuments_ (Cairo, 1902); A. Gayet, _L'Art Copte_ (Paris, 1902); A.J. Butler, _Ancient Coptic Churches_. For North Africa: S. Csell, _Les Monuments antiques de l'Algérie_ (Paris, 1901). For Italy: A. Venturi, _Storia dell' arte Italiana_ (Milan, 1901); G. Rivoira, _Le Origini della architettura Lombarda_ (Rome, 1901); C. Errard and A. Gayet, _L'Art byzantin_, &c. (Paris,1903).

(W. R. L.)

[1] For Byzantine literature see GREEK LITERATURE: _Byzantine_.

BYZANTIUM, an ancient Greek city on the shores of the Bosporus, occupying the most easterly of the seven hills on which modern Constantinople stands. It was said to have been founded by Megarians and Argives under Byzas about 657 B.C., but the original settlement having been destroyed in the reign of Darius Hystaspes by the satrap Otanes, it was recolonized by the Spartan Pausanias, who wrested it from the Medes after the battle of Plataea (479 B.C.)--a circumstance which led several ancient chroniclers to ascribe its foundation to him. Its situation, said to have been fixed by the Delphic oracle, was remarkable for beauty and security. It had complete control over the Euxine grain-trade; the absence of tides and the depth of its harbour rendered its quays accessible to vessels of large burden; while the tunny and other fisheries were so lucrative that the curved inlet near which it stood became known as the Golden Horn. The greatest hindrance to its prosperity was the miscellaneous character of the population, partly Lacedaemonian and partly Athenian, who flocked to it under Pausanias. It was thus a subject of dispute between these states, and was alternately in the possession of each, till it fell into the hands of the Macedonians. From the same cause arose the violent intestine contests which ended in the establishment of a rude and turbulent democracy. About seven years after its second colonization, the Athenian Cimon wrested it from the Lacedaemonians; but in 440 B.C. it returned to its former allegiance. Alcibiades, after a severe blockade (408 B.C.), gained possession of the city through the treachery of the Athenian party; in 405 B.C. it was retaken by Lysander and placed under a Spartan harmost. It was under the Lacedaemonian power when the Ten Thousand, exasperated by the conduct of the governor, made themselves masters of the city, and would have pillaged it had they not been dissuaded by the eloquence of Xenophon. In 390 B.C. Thrasybulus, with the assistance of Heracleides and Archebius, expelled the Lacedaemonian oligarchy, and restored democracy and the Athenian influence.

After having withstood an attempt under Epaminondas to restore it to the Lacedaemonians, Byzantium joined with Rhodes, Chios, Cos, and Mausolus, King of Caria, in throwing off the yoke of Athens, but soon after sought Athenian assistance when Philip of Macedon, having overrun Thrace, advanced against it. The Athenians under Chares suffered a severe defeat from Amyntas, the Macedonian admiral, but in the following year gained a decisive victory under Phocion and compelled Philip to raise the siege. The deliverance of the besieged from a surprise, by means of a flash of light which revealed the advancing masses of the Macedonian army, has rendered this siege memorable. As a memorial of the miraculous interference, the Byzantines erected an altar to Torch-bearing Hecate, and stamped a crescent on their coins, a device which is retained by the Turks to this day. They also granted the Athenians extraordinary privileges, and erected a monument in honour of the event in a public part of the city.

During the reign of Alexander Byzantium was compelled to acknowledge the Macedonian supremacy; after the decay of the Macedonian power it regained its independence, but suffered from the repeated incursions of the Scythians. The losses which they sustained by land roused the Byzantines to indemnify themselves on the vessels which still crowded the harbour, and the merchantmen which cleared the straits; but this had the effect of provoking a war with the neighbouring naval powers. The exchequer being drained by the payment of 10,000 pieces of gold to buy off the Gauls who had invaded their territories about 279 B.C., and by the imposition of an annual tribute which was ultimately raised to 80 talents, they were compelled to exact a toll on all the ships which passed the Bosporus--a measure which the Rhodians resented and avenged by a war, wherein the Byzantines were defeated. After the retreat of the Gauls Byzantium rendered considerable services to Rome in the contests with Philip II., Antiochus and Mithradates.

During the first years of its alliance with Rome it held the rank of a free confederate city; but, having sought arbitration on some of its domestic disputes, it was subjected to the imperial jurisdiction, and gradually stripped of its privileges, until reduced to the status of an ordinary Roman colony. In recollection of its former services, the emperor Claudius remitted the heavy tribute which had been imposed on it; but the last remnant of its independence was taken away by Vespasian, who, in answer to a remonstrance from Apollonius of Tyana, taunted the inhabitants with having "forgotten to be free." During the civil wars it espoused the party of Pescennius Niger; and though skilfully defended by the engineer Periscus, it was besieged and taken (A.D. 196) by Severus, who destroyed the city, demolished the famous wall, which was built of massive stones so closely riveted together as to appear one block, put the principal inhabitants to the sword and subjected the remainder to the Perinthians. This overthrow of Byzantium was a great loss to the empire, since it might have served as a protection against the Goths, who afterwards sailed past it into the Mediterranean. Severus afterwards relented, and, rebuilding a large portion of the town, gave it the name of Augusta Antonina. He ornamented the city with baths, and surrounded the hippodrome with porticos; but it was not till the time of Caracalla that it was restored to its former political privileges. It had scarcely begun to recover its former position when, through the capricious resentment of Gallienus, the inhabitants were once more put to the sword and the town was pillaged. From this disaster the inhabitants recovered so far as to be able to give an effectual check to an invasion of the Goths in the reign of Claudius II., and the fortifications were greatly strengthened during the civil wars which followed the abdication of Diocletian. Licinius, after his defeat before Adrianople, retired to Byzantium, where he was besieged by Constantine, and compelled to surrender (A.D. 323-324). To check the inroads of the barbarians on the north of the Black Sea, Diocletian had resolved to transfer his capital to Nicomedia; but Constantine, struck with the advantages which the situation of Byzantium presented, resolved to build a new city there on the site of the old and transfer the seat of government to it. The new capital was inaugurated with special ceremonies, A.D. 330. (See CONSTANTINOPLE.)

The ancient historians invariably note the profligacy of the inhabitants of Byzantium. They are described as an idle, depraved people, spending their time for the most part in loitering about the harbour, or carousing over the fine wine of Maronea. In war they trembled at the sound of a trumpet, in peace they quaked before the shouting of their own demagogues; and during the assault of Philip II. they could only be prevailed on to man the walls by the savour of extempore cook-shops distributed along the ramparts. The modern Greeks attribute the introduction of Christianity into Byzantium to St Andrew; it certainly had some hold there in the time of Severus.

[v.04 p.0912] C The third letter in the Latin alphabet and its descendants corresponds in position and in origin to the Greek Gamma ([Gamma], [gamma]), which in its turn is borrowed from the third symbol of the Phoenician alphabet (Heb. _Gimel_). The earliest Semitic records give its form as [Illustration] or more frequently [Illustration] or [Illustration] The form [Illustration] is found in the earliest inscriptions of Crete, Attica, Naxos and some other of the Ionic islands. In Argolis and Euboea especially a form with legs of unequal length is found [Illustration] From this it is easy to pass to the most widely spread Greek form, the ordinary [Illustration] In Corinth, however, and its colony Corcyra, in Ozolian Locris and Elis, a form [Illustration] inclined at a different angle is found. From this form the transition is simple to the rounded [Illustration] which is generally found in the same localities as the pointed form, but is more widely spread, occurring in Arcadia and on Chalcidian vases of the 6th century B.C., in Rhodes and Megara with their colonies in Sicily. In all these cases the sound represented was a hard G (as in _gig_). The rounded form was probably that taken over by the Romans and with the value of G. This is shown by the permanent abbreviation of the proper names Gaius and Gnaeus by C. and Cn. respectively. On the early inscription discovered in the Roman Forum in 1899 the letter occurs but once, in the form [Illustration] written from right to left. The broad lower end of the symbol is rather an accidental pit in the stone than an attempt at a diacritic mark--the word is _regei_, in all probability the early dative form of _rex_, "king." It is hard to decide why Latin adopted the _g_-symbol with the value of _k_, a letter which it possessed originally but dropped, except in such stereotyped abbreviations as K. for the proper name _Kaeso_ and _Kal._ for _Calendae_. There are at least two possibilities: (1) that in Latium _g_ and _k_ were pronounced almost identically, as, _e.g._, in the German of Württemberg or in the Celtic dialects, the difference consisting only in the greater energy with which the _k_-sound is produced; (2) that the confusion is graphic, K being sometimes written [Illustration] which was then regarded as two separate symbols. A further peculiarity of the use of C in Latin is in the abbreviation for the district _Subura_ in Roma and its adjective _Suburanus_, which appears as SVC. Here C no doubt represents G, but there is no interchange between _g_ and _b_ in Latin. In other dialects of Italy _b_ is found representing an original voiced guttural (_gw_), which, however, is regularly replaced by _v_ in Latin. As the district was full of traders, _Subura_ may very well be an imported word, but the form with C must either go back to a period before the disappearance of _g_ before _v_ or must come from some other Italic dialect. The symbol G was a new coinage in the 3rd century B.C. The pronunciation of C throughout the period of classical Latin was that of an unvoiced guttural stop (_k_). In other dialects, however, it had been palatalized to a sibilant before _i_-sounds some time before the Christian era; _e.g._ in the Umbrian _façia_ = Latin _facial_. In Latin there is no evidence for the interchange of _c_ with a sibilant earlier than the 6th century A.D. in south Italy and the 7th century A.D. in Gaul (Lindsay, _Latin Language_, p. 88). This change has, however, taken place in all Romance languages except Sardinian. In Anglo-Saxon _c_ was adopted to represent the hard stop. After the Norman conquest many English words were re-spelt under Norman influence. Thus Norman-French spelt its palatalized _c_-sound (_=tsh_) with _ch_ as in _cher_ and the English palatalized _cild_, &c. became _child_, &c. In Provençal from the 10th century, and in the northern dialects of France from the 13th century, this palatalized _c_ (in different districts _ts_ and _tsh_) became a simple _s_. English also adopted the value of _s_ for _c_ in the 13th century before _e_, _i_ and _y_. In some foreign words like _cicala_ the _ch-_ (_tsh_) value is given to c. In the transliteration of foreign languages also it receives different values, having that of _tsh_ in the transliteration of Sanskrit and of _ts_ in various Slavonic dialects.

As a numeral C denotes 100. This use is borrowed from Latin, in which the symbol was originally [Illustration] This, like the numeral symbols later identified with L and M, was thus utilized since it was not required as a letter, there being no sound in Latin corresponding to the Greek [theta]. Popular etymology identified the symbol with the initial letter of _centum_, "hundred."

(P. GI.)

CAB (shortened about 1825 from the Fr. _cabriolet_, derived from _cabriole_, implying a bounding motion), a form of horsed vehicle for passengers either with two ("hansom") or four wheels ("four-wheeler" or "growler"), introduced into London as the _cabriolet de place_, from Paris in 1820 (see CARRIAGE). Other vehicles plying for hire and driven by mechanical means are included in the definition of the word "cab" in the London Cab and Stage Carriage Act 1007. The term "cab" is also applied to the driver's or stoker's shelter on a locomotive-engine.

Cabs, or hackney carriages, as they are called in English acts of parliament, are regulated in the United Kingdom by a variety of statutes. In London the principal acts are the Hackney Carriage Acts of 1831-1853, the Metropolitan Public Carriages Act 1869, the London Cab Act 1896 and the London Cab and Stage Carriage Act 1907. In other large British towns cabs are usually regulated by private acts which incorporate the Town Police Clauses Act 1847, an act which contains provisions more or less similar to the London acts. The act of 1869 defined a hackney carriage as any carriage for the conveyance of passengers which plies for hire within the metropolitan police district and is not a stage coach, _i.e._ a conveyance in which the passengers are charged separate and distinct fares for their seats. Every cab must be licensed by a licence renewable every year by the home secretary, the licence being issued by the commissioner of police. Every cab before being licensed must be inspected at the police station of the district by the inspector of public carriages, and certified by him to be in a fit condition for public use. The licence costs £2. The number of persons which the cab is licensed to carry must be painted at the back on the outside. It must carry a lighted lamp during the period between one hour after sunset and one hour before sunrise. The cab must be under the charge of a driver having a licence from the home secretary. A driver before obtaining a licence, which costs five shillings per annum, must pass an examination as to his ability to drive and as to his knowledge of the topography of London.

General regulations with regard to fares and hiring may be made from time to time by the home secretary under the London Cab and Stage Carriage Act 1907. The hiring is by distance or by time as the hirer may decide at the beginning of the hiring; if not otherwise expressed the fare is paid according to distance. If a driver is hired by distance he is not compelled to drive more than six miles, and if hired by time he is not compelled to drive for more than one hour. When a cab is hired in London by distance, and discharged within a circle the radius of which is four miles (the centre being taken at Charing Cross), the fare is one shilling for any distance not exceeding two miles, and sixpence for every additional mile or part of a mile. Outside the circle the fare for each mile, or part of a mile, is one shilling. When a cab is hired by time, the fare (inside or outside the circle) is two shillings and sixpence for the first hour, and eightpence for every quarter of an hour afterwards. Extra payment has to be made for luggage (twopence per piece outside), for extra passengers (sixpence each for more than two), and for waiting (eightpence each completed quarter of an hour). If a horse cab is fitted with a taximeter (_vide infra_) the fare for a journey wholly _within_ or partly without and

## partly within the four-mile radius, and not exceeding one mile or a period

of ten minutes, is sixpence. For each half mile or six minutes an additional threepence is paid. If the journey is wholly _without_ the four-mile radius the fare for the first mile is one shilling, and for each additional quarter of a mile or period of three minutes, threepence is paid. If the cab is one propelled by mechanical means the fare for a journey not [v.04 p.0913] exceeding one mile or a period of ten minutes is eightpence, and for every additional quarter mile or period of 2½ minutes twopence is paid. A driver required to wait may demand a reasonable sum as a deposit and also payment of the sum which he has already earned. The London Cab Act 1896 (by which for the first time legal sanction was given to the word "cab") made an important change in the law in the interest of cab drivers. It renders liable to a penalty on summary conviction any person who (_a_) hires a cab knowing or having reason to believe that he cannot pay the lawful fare, or with intent to avoid payment; (_b_) fraudulently endeavours to avoid payment; (_c_) refuses to pay or refuses to give his address, or gives a false address with intent to deceive. The offences mentioned (generally known as "bilking") may be punished by imprisonment without the option of a fine, and the whole or any part of the fine imposed may be applied in compensation to the driver.

Strictly speaking, it is an offence for a cab to ply for hire when not waiting on an authorized "standing," but cabs passing in the street for this purpose are not deemed to be "plying for hire." These stands for cabs are appointed by the commissioner of police or the home secretary. "Privileged cabs" is the designation given to those cabs which by virtue of a contract between a railway company and a number of cab-owners are alone admitted to ply for hire within a company's station, until they are all engaged, on condition (1) of paying a certain weekly or annual sum, and (2) of guaranteeing to have cabs in attendance at all hours. This system was abolished by the act of 1907, but the home secretary was empowered to suspend or modify the abolition if it should interfere with the proper accommodation of the public.

At one time there was much discussion in England as to the desirability of legalizing on cabs the use of a mechanical fare-recorder such as, under the name of taximeter or taxameter, is in general use on the continent of Europe. It is now universal on hackney carriages propelled by mechanical means, and it has also extended largely to those drawn by animal power. A taximeter consists of a securely closed and sealed metal box containing a mechanism actuated by a flexible shaft connected with the wheel of the vehicle, in the same manner as the speedometer on a motor car. It has, within plain view of the passenger, a number of apertures in which appear figures showing the amount payable at any time. A small lever, with a metal flag, bearing the words "for hire" stands upright upon it when the cab is disengaged. As soon as a passenger enters the cab the lever is depressed by the driver and the recording mechanism starts. At the end of the journey the figures upon the dials show exactly the sum payable for hire; this sum is based on a combination of time and distance.

CABAL (through the Fr. _cabale_ from the _Cabbala_ or _Kabbalah_, the theosophical interpretation of the Hebrew scriptures), a private organization or party engaged in secret intrigues, and applied also to the intrigues themselves. The word came into common usage in English during the reign of Charles II. to describe the committee of the privy council known as the "Committee for Foreign Affairs," which developed into the cabinet. The invidious meaning attached to the term was stereotyped by the coincidence that the initial letters of the names of the five ministers, Clifford, Arlington, Buckingham, Ashley and Lauderdale, who signed the treaty of alliance with France in 1673, spelled cabal.

CABALLERO, FERNÁN (1796-1877), the pseudonym adopted from the name of a village in the province of Ciudad Real by the Spanish novelist Cecilia Francisca Josefa Böhl de Faber y Larrea. Born at Morges in Switzerland on the 24th of December 1796, she was the daughter of Johan Nikolas Böhl von Faber, a Hamburg merchant, who lived long in Spain, married a native of Cadiz, and is creditably known to students of Spanish literature as the editor of the _Floresta de rimas antiguas castellanas_ (1821-1825), and the _Teatro español anterior á Lope de Vega_ (1832). Educated principally at Hamburg, she visited Spain in 1815, and, unfortunately for herself, in 1816 married Antonio Planells y Bardaxi, an infantry captain of bad character. In the following year Planells was killed in action, and in 1822 the young widow married Francisco Ruiz del Arco, marqués de Arco Hermoso, an officer in one of the Spanish household regiments. Upon the death of Arco Hermoso in 1835, the marquesa found herself in straitened circumstances, and in less than two years she married Antonio Arrón de Ayala, a man considerably her junior. Arrón was appointed consul in Australia, engaged in business enterprises and made money; but unfortunate speculations drove him to commit suicide in 1859. Ten years earlier the name of Fernán Caballero became famous in Spain as the author of _La Gaviola_. The writer had already published in German an anonymous romance, _Sola_ (1840), and curiously enough the original draft of _La Gaviota_ was written in French. This novel, translated into Spanish by José Joaquín de Mora, appeared as the _feuilleton_ of _El Heraldo_ (1849), and was received with marked favour. Ochoa, a prominent critic of the day, ratified the popular judgment, and hopefully proclaimed the writer to be a rival of Scott. No other Spanish book of the 19th century has obtained such instant and universal recognition. It was translated into most European languages, and, though it scarcely seems to deserve the intense enthusiasm which it excited, it is the best of its author's works, with the possible exception of _La Familia de Alvareda_ (which was written, first of all, in German). Less successful attempts are _Lady Virginia_ and _Clemencia_; but the short stories entitled _Cuadros de Costumbres_ are interesting in matter and form, and _Una en otra_ and _Elia ó la España treinta años ha_ are excellent specimens of picturesque narration. It would be difficult to maintain that Fernán Caballero was a great literary artist, but it is certain that she was a born teller of stories and that she has a graceful style very suitable to her purpose. She came into Spain at a most happy moment, before the new order had perceptibly disturbed the old, and she brought to bear not alone a fine natural gift of observation, but a freshness of vision, undulled by long familiarity. She combined the advantages of being both a foreigner and a native. In later publications she insisted too emphatically upon the moral lesson, and lost much of her primitive simplicity and charm; but we may believe her statement that, though she occasionally idealized circumstances, she was conscientious in choosing for her themes subjects which had occurred in her own experience. Hence she may be regarded as a pioneer in the realistic field, and this historical fact adds to her positive importance. For many years she was the most popular of Spanish writers, and the sensation caused by her death at Seville on the 7th of April 1877 proved that her naïve truthfulness still attracted readers who were interested in records of national customs and manners.

Her _Obras completas_ are included in the _Colección de escritores castellanos_: a useful biography by Fernando de Gabriel Ruiz de Apodaca precedes the _Últimas producciones de Fernán Caballero_ (Seville, 1878).

(J. F.-K.)

CABANEL, ALEXANDRE (1823-1889), French painter, was born at Montpellier, and studied in Paris, gaining the Prix de Rome in 1845. His pictures soon attracted attention, and by his "Birth of Venus" (1863), now in the Luxembourg, he became famous, being elected that year to the Institute. He became the most popular portrait painter of the day, and his pupils included a number of famous artists.

CABANIS, PIERRE JEAN GEORGE (1757-1808), French physiologist, was born at Cosnac (Corrèze) on the 5th of June 1757, and was the son of Jean Baptiste Cabanis (1723-1786), a lawyer and agronomist. Sent at the age of ten to the college of Brives, he showed great aptitude for study, but his independence of spirit was so excessive that he was almost constantly in a state of rebellion against his teachers, and was finally dismissed from the school. He was then taken to Paris by his father and left to carry on his studies at his own discretion for two years. From 1773 to 1775 he travelled in Poland and Germany, and on his return to Paris he devoted himself mainly to poetry. About this time he ventured to send in to the Academy a translation of the passage from Homer proposed for their prize, and, though his attempt passed without notice, he received so much encouragement from his friends that he contemplated translating the whole of the _Iliad_. But at the [v.04 p.0914] desire of his father he relinquished these pleasant literary employments, and resolving to engage in some settled profession selected that of medicine. In 1789 his _Observations sur les hôpitaux_ procured him an appointment as administrator of hospitals in Paris, and in 1795 he became professor of hygiene at the medical school of Paris, a post which he exchanged for the chair of legal medicine and the history of medicine in 1799. From inclination and from weak health he never engaged much in practice as a physician, his interests lying in the deeper problems of medical and physiological science. During the last two years of Mirabeau's life he was intimately connected with that extraordinary man, and wrote the four papers on public education which were found among the papers of Mirabeau at his death, and were edited by the real author soon afterwards in 1791. During the illness which terminated his life Mirabeau confided himself entirely to the professional skill of Cabanis. Of the progress of the malady, and the circumstances attending the death of Mirabeau, Cabanis drew up a detailed narrative, intended as a justification of his treatment of the case. Cabanis espoused with enthusiasm the cause of the Revolution. He was a member of the Council of Five Hundred and then of the Conservative senate, and the dissolution of the Directory was the result of a motion which he made to that effect. But his political career was not of long continuance. A foe to tyranny in every shape, he was decidedly hostile to the policy of Bonaparte, and constantly rejected every solicitation to accept a place under his government. He died at Meulan on the 5th of May 1808.

A complete edition of Cabanis's works was begun in 1825, and five volumes were published. His principal work, _Rapports du physique et du moral de l'homme_, consists in part of memoirs, read in 1796 and 1797 to the Institute, and is a sketch of physiological psychology. Psychology is with Cabanis directly linked on to biology, for sensibility, the fundamental fact, is the highest grade of life and the lowest of intelligence. All the intellectual processes are evolved from sensibility, and sensibility itself is a property of the nervous system. The soul is not an entity, but a faculty; thought is the function of the brain. Just as the stomach and intestines receive food and digest it, so the brain receives impressions, digests them, and has as its organic secretion, thought. Alongside of this harsh materialism Cabanis held another principle. He belonged in biology to the vitalistic school of G.E. Stahl, and in the posthumous work, _Lettre sur les causes premières_ (1824), the consequences of this opinion became clear. Life is something added to the organism; over and above the universally diffused sensibility there is some living and productive power to which we give the name of Nature. But it is impossible to avoid ascribing to this power both intelligence and will. In us this living power constitutes the ego, which is truly immaterial and immortal. These results Cabanis did not think out of harmony with his earlier theory.

CABARRUS, FRANÇOIS (1752-1810), French adventurer and Spanish financier, was born at Bayonne, where his father was a merchant. Being sent into Spain on business he fell in love with a Spanish lady, and marrying her, settled in Madrid. Here his private business was the manufacture of soap; but he soon began to interest himself in the public questions which were ventilated even at the court of Spain. The enlightenment of the 18th century had penetrated as far as Madrid; the king, Charles III., was favourable to reform; and a circle of men animated by the new spirit were trying to infuse fresh vigour into an enfeebled state. Among these Cabarrus became conspicuous, especially in finance. He originated a bank, and a company to trade with the Philippine Islands; and as one of the council of finance he had planned many reforms in that department of the administration, when Charles III. died (1788), and the reactionary government of Charles IV. arrested every kind of enlightened progress. The men who had taken an active part in reform were suspected and prosecuted. Cabarrus himself was accused of embezzlement and thrown into prison. After a confinement of two years he was released, created a count and employed in many honourable missions; he would even have been sent to Paris as Spanish ambassador, had not the Directory objected to him as being of French birth. Cabarrus took no part in the transactions by which Charles IV. was obliged to abdicate and make way for Joseph, brother of Napoleon, but his French birth and intimate knowledge of Spanish affairs recommended him to the emperor as the fittest person for the difficult post of minister of finance, which he held at his death. His beautiful daughter Thérèse, under the name of Madame Tallien (afterwards princess of Chimay), played an interesting part in the later stages of the French Revolution.

CABASILAS, NICOLAUS (d. 1371), Byzantine mystic and theological writer. He was on intimate terms with the emperor John VI. Cantacuzene, whom he accompanied in his retirement to a monastery. In 1355 he succeeded his uncle Nilus Cabasilas, like himself a determined opponent of the union of the Greek and Latin churches, as archbishop of Thessalonica. In the Hesychast controversy he took the side of the monks of Athos, but refused to agree to the theory of the uncreated light. His chief work is his [Greek: Peri tês en Christôi zôês] (_ed. pr._ of the Greek text, with copious introduction, by W. Gass, 1849; new ed. by M. Heinze, 1899), in which he lays down the principle that union with Christ is effected by the three great mysteries of baptism, confirmation and the eucharist. He also wrote homilies on various subjects, and a speech against usurers, printed with other works in Migne, _Patrologia Graeca_, c. i. A large number of his works is still extant in MS.

See C. Krumbacher, _Geschichte der byzantinischen Litteratur_ (1897), and article in Herzog-Hauck, _Realencyklopädie für protestantische Theologie_ (1901).

CABATÚAN, a town of the province of Ilóilo, Panay, Philippine Islands, on a branch of the Suague river, 15 m. N.W. of Ilóilo, the capital. Pop. (1903) 16,497. In 1903, after the census had been taken, the neighbouring town of Maasin, with a population of 8401, was annexed to Cabatúan. Its climate is healthful. The surrounding country is very fertile and produces large quantities of rice, as well as Indian corn, tobacco, sugar, coffee and a great variety of fruits. The language is Visayan. Cabatúan was founded in 1732.

CABBAGE. The parent form of the variety of culinary and fodder vegetables included under this head is generally supposed to be the wild or sea cabbage (_Brassica oleracea_), a plant found near the sea coast of various parts of England and continental Europe, although Alphonse de Candolle considered it to be really descended from the two or three allied species which are yet found growing wild on the Mediterranean coast. In any case the cultivated varieties have departed very widely from the original type, and they present very marked and striking dissimilarities among themselves. The wild cabbage is a comparatively insignificant plant, growing from 1 to 2 ft. high, in appearance very similar to the corn mustard or charlock (_Sinapis arvensis_), but differing from it in having smooth leaves. The wild plant has fleshy, shining, waved and lobed leaves (the uppermost being undivided but toothed), large yellow flowers, elongated seed-pod, and seeds with conduplicate cotyledons. Notwithstanding the fact that the cultivated forms differ in habit so widely, it is remarkable that the flower, seed-pods and seeds of the varieties present no appreciable difference.

John Lindley proposed the following classification for the various forms, which includes all yet cultivated: (1) All the leaf-buds active and open, as in wild cabbage and kale or greens; (2) All the leaf-buds active, but forming heads, as in Brussels sprouts; (3) Terminal leaf-bud alone active, forming a head, as in common cabbage, savoys, &c.; (4) Terminal leaf-bud alone active and open, with most of the flowers abortive and succulent, as in cauliflower and broccoli; (5) All the leaf-buds active and open, with most of the flowers abortive and succulent, as in sprouting broccoli. The last variety bears the same relation to common broccoli as Brussels sprouts do to the common cabbage. Of all these forms there are numerous gardeners' varieties, all of which reproduce faithfully enough their parent form by proper and separate cultivation.

Under Lindley's first class, common or Scotch kale or borecole (_Brassica oleracea_ var. _acephala_ or var. _fimbriata_) includes several varieties which are amongst the hardiest of our esculents, and seldom fail to yield a good supply of winter greens. They require well-enriched soil, and sufficient space for full exposure to air; and they should also be sown early, so as to be well [v.04 p.0915] established and hardened before winter. The main crops should be sown about the first week of April, or, in the north, in the third week of March, and a succession a month later. The Buda kale is sown in May, and planted out in September, but a sowing for late spring use may be made in the last week of August and transplanted towards the end of September. To prevent overcrowding, the plants should be transplanted as soon as they are of sufficient size, but if the ground is not ready to receive them a sufficient number should be pricked out in some open spot. In general the more vigorous sorts should be planted in rows 3 ft. and the smaller growers 2 ft. apart, and 18 in. from plant to plant. In these the heads should be first used, only so much of the heart as is fresh and tender being cut out for boiling; side shoots or sprouts are afterwards produced for a long time in succession, and may be used so long as they are tender enough to admit of being gathered by snapping their stalks asunder.

The plant sends up a stout central stem, growing upright to a height of about 2 ft., with close-set, large thick, plain leaves of a light red or purplish hue. The lower leaves are stripped off for use as the plants grow up, and used for the preparation of broth or "Scotch kail," a dish at one time in great repute in the north-eastern districts of Scotland. A very remarkable variety of open-leaved cabbage is cultivated in the Channel Islands under the name of the Jersey or branching cabbage. It grows to a height of 8 ft, but has been known to attain double that altitude. It throws out branches from the central stem, which is sufficiently firm and woody to be fashioned into walking-sticks; and the stems are even used by the islanders as rafters for bearing the thatch on their cottage-roofs. Several varieties are cultivated as ornamental plants on account of their beautifully coloured, frizzled and laciniated leaves.

Brussels sprouts (_Brassica oleracea_ var. _bullata gemmifera_) are miniature cabbage-heads, about an inch in diameter, which form in the axils of the leaves. There appears to be no information as to the plant's origin, but, according to Van Mons (1765-1842), physician and chemist, it is mentioned in the year 1213, in the regulations for holding the markets of Belgium, under the name of _spruyten_ (sprouts). It is very hardy and productive, and is much esteemed for the table on account of its flavour and its sightly appearance. The seed should be sown about the middle of March, and again in the first or second week in April for succession. Any good garden soil is suitable. For an early crop it may be sown in a warm pit in February, pricked out and hardened in frames, and planted out in a warm situation in April. The main crop may be planted in rows 2 ft. asunder, the plants 18 in. apart. They should be got out early, so as to be well established and come into use before winter. The head may be cut and used after the best of the little rosettes which feather the stem have been gathered; but, if cut too early, it exposes these rosettes, which are the most delicate portion of the produce, to injury, if the weather be severe. The earliest sprouts become fit for use in November, and they continue good, or even improve in quality, till the month of March following; by successive sowings the sprouts are obtained for the greater part of the year.

The third class is chiefly represented by the common or drumhead cabbage, _Brassica oleracea_ var. _capitata_, the varieties of which are distinguished by difference in size, form and colour. In Germany it is converted into a popular article of diet under the name of _Sauerkraut_ by placing in a tub alternate layers of salt and cabbage. An acid fermentation sets in, which after a few days is complete, when the vessel is tightly covered over and the product kept for use with animal food.

The savoy is a hardy green variety, characterized by its very wrinkled leaves. The Portugal cabbage, or _Couve Tronchuda_, is a variety, the tops of which form an excellent cabbage, while the midribs of the large leaves are cooked like sea-kale.

Cabbages contain a very small percentage of nitrogenous compounds as compared with most other articles of food. Their percentage composition, when cooked, is--water, 97.4; fat, 0.1; carbohydrate, 0.4; mineral matter, 0.1; cellulose, 1.3; nitrogenous matter (only about half being proteid), 0.6. Their food-value, apart from their anti-scorbutic properties, is therefore practically nil.

The cabbage requires a well-manured and well-wrought loamy soil. It should have abundant water in summer, liquid manure being specially beneficial. Round London where it is grown in perfection, the ground for it is dug to the depth of two spades or spits, the lower portion being brought up to the

## action of the weather, and rendered available as food for the plants; while

the top-soil, containing the eggs and larvae of many insects, being deeply buried, the plants are less liable to be attacked by the club disease. Farm-yard manure is that most suitable for the cabbage, but artificial manures such as guano, superphosphate of lime or gypsum, together with lime-rubbish, wood-ashes and marl, may, if required, be applied with advantage.

The first sowing of cabbage should be made about the beginning of March; this will be ready for use in July and August, following the autumn-sown crops. Another sowing should be made in the last week of March or first week of April, and will afford a supply from August till November; and a further crop may be made in May to supply young-hearted cabbages in the early part of winter. The autumn sowing, which is the most important, and affords the supply for spring and early summer use, should be made about the last week in August, in warm localities in the south, and about a fortnight earlier in the north; or, to meet fluctuations of climate, it is as well in both cases to anticipate this sowing by another two or three weeks earlier, planting out a portion from each, but the larger number from that sowing which promises best to stand without running to seed.

The cabbages grown late in autumn and in the beginning of winter are denominated coleworts (vulg. collards), from a kindred vegetable no longer cultivated. Two sowings are made, in the middle of June and in July, and the seedlings are planted a foot or 15 in. asunder, the rows being 8 or 10 in. apart. The sorts employed are the Rosette and the Hardy Green.

About London the large sorts, as Enfield Market, are planted for spring cabbages 2 ft. apart each way; but a plant from an earlier sowing is dibbled in between every two in the rows, and an intermediate row a foot apart is put in between the permanent rows, these extra plants being drawn as coleworts in the course of the winter. The smaller sorts of cabbage may be planted 12 in. apart, with 12 or 15 in. between the rows. The large sorts should be planted 2 ft. apart, with 2½ ft. between the rows. The only culture required is to stir the surface with the hoe to destroy the weeds, and to draw up the soil round the stems.

The red cabbage, _Brassica oleracea_ var. _capitata rubra_, of which the Red Dutch is the most commonly grown, is much used for pickling. It is sown about the end of July, and again in March or April. The Dwarf Red and Utrecht Red are smaller sorts. The culture is in every respect the same as in the other sorts, but the plants have to stand until they form hard close hearts.

Cauliflower, which is the chief representative of class 4, consists of the inflorescence of the plant modified so as to form a compact succulent white mass or head. The cauliflower (_Brassica oleracea_ var. _botrytis cauliflora_) is said by our old authors to have been introduced from Cyprus, where, as well as on the Mediterranean coasts, it appears to have been cultivated for ages. It is one of the most delicately flavoured of vegetables, the dense cluster formed by its incipient succulent flower-buds being the edible portion.

The sowing for the first or spring crop, to be in use in May and June, should be made from the 15th to the 25th of August for England, and from the 1st to the 15th of August for Scotland. In the neighbourhood of London the growers adhere as nearly as possible to the 21st day. A sowing to produce heads in July and August takes place in February on a slight hotbed. A late spring sowing to produce cauliflowers in September or October or later, should be made early in April and another about the 20th of May.

The cauliflower succeeds best in a rich soil and sheltered position; but, to protect the young plants in winter, they are sometimes pricked out in a warm situation at the foot of a south [v.04 p.0916] wall, and in severe weather covered with hoops and mats. A better method is to plant them thickly under a garden frame, securing them from cold by coverings and giving air in mild weather. For a very early supply, a few scores of plants may be potted and kept under glass during winter and planted out in spring, defended with a hand-glass. Sometimes patches of three or four plants on a south border are sheltered by hand-glasses throughout the winter. It is advantageous to prick out the spring-sown plants into some sheltered place before they are finally transplanted in May. The later crop, the transplanting of which may take place at various times, is treated like early cabbages. After planting, all that is necessary is to hoe the ground and draw up the soil about the stems.

It is found that cauliflowers ready for use in October may be kept in perfection over winter. For this purpose they are lifted carefully with the spade, keeping a ball of earth attached to the roots. Some of the large outside leaves are removed, and any points of leaves that immediately overhang the flower are cut off. They are then placed either in pots or in garden frames, the plants being arranged close together, but without touching. In mild dry weather the glass frames are drawn off, but they are kept on during rainstorms, ventilation being afforded by slightly tilting the frames, and in severe frost they are thickly covered with mats.

Broccoli is merely a variety of cauliflower, differing from the other in the form and colour of its inflorescence and its hardiness. The broccoli (_Brassica oleracea_ var. _botrytis asparagoides_) succeeds best in loamy soil, somewhat firm in texture. For the autumn broccolis the ground can scarcely be too rich, but the winter and spring sorts on ground of this character are apt to become so succulent and tender that the plants suffer from frost even in sheltered situations, while plants less stimulated by manure and growing in the open field may be nearly all saved, even in severe winters. The main crops of the early sorts for use in autumn should be sown early in May, and planted out while young to prevent them coming too early into flower; in the north they may be sown a fortnight earlier. The later sorts for use during winter and spring should be sown about the middle or end of May, or about ten days earlier in the north. The seed-beds should be made in fresh light soil; and if the season be dry the ground should be well watered before sowing. If the young plants are crowding each other they should be thinned. The ground should not be dug before planting them out, as the firmer it is the better; but a shallow drill may be drawn to mark the lines. The larger-growing sorts may be put in rows 3 ft. apart, and the plants about 2½ ft. apart in the rows, and the smaller-growing ones at from 2 to 2½ ft. between, and 1½ to 2 ft. in the rows. If the ground is not prepared when young plants are ready for removal, they should be transferred to nursery beds and planted at 3 to 4 in. apart, but the earlier they can be got into their permanent places the better.

It is of course the young flower-heads of the plant which are eaten. When these form, they should be shielded from the light by bending or breaking down an inner leaf or two. In some of the sorts the leaves naturally curve over the heads. To prevent injury to the heads by frost in severe winters, the plants should be laid in with their heads sloping towards the north, the soil being thrown back so as to cover their stems; or they may be taken up and laid in closely in deep trenches, so that none of the lower bare portion of the stem may be exposed. Some dry fern may also be laid over the tops. The spring varieties are extremely valuable, as they come at a season when the finer vegetables are scarce. They afford a supply from December to May inclusive.

Broccoli sprouts, the representative of the fifth class, are a form of recent introduction, and consist of flowering sprouts springing from the axils of the leaves. The purple-leaved variety is a very hardy and much-esteemed vegetable.

Kohl-rabi (_Brassica oleracea_ var. _caulo-rapa_) is a peculiar variety of cabbage in which the stem, just above ground, swells into a fleshy turnip-like mass. It is much cultivated in certain districts as a food for stock, for which purpose the drumhead cabbage and the thousand-headed kale are also largely used. Kohl-rabi is exceedingly hardy, withstanding both severe frosts and drought. It is not much grown in English gardens, though when used young it forms a good substitute for turnips. The seeds should be sown in May and June, and the seedlings should be planted shallowly in well-manured ground, 8 or 10 in. apart, in rows 15 in. asunder; and they should be well watered, so as to induce quick growth.

The varieties of cabbage, like other fresh vegetables, are possessed of anti-scorbutic properties; but unless eaten when very fresh and tender they are difficult of digestion, and have a very decided tendency to produce flatulence.

Although the varieties reproduce by seed with remarkable constancy, occasional departures from the types occur, more especially among the varieties of spring cabbages, cauliflowers and broccoli. The departures, known technically as "rogues," are not as a rule sufficiently numerous to materially affect crops grown for domestic purposes. Rogues appearing among the stocks of seed-growers, however, if allowed to remain, very materially affect the character of particular stocks by the dissemination of strange pollen and by the admixture of their seed. Great care is exercised by seed-growers, with reputations to maintain, to eliminate these from among their stock-plants before the flowering period is reached.

Several species of palm, from the fact of yielding large sapid central buds which are cooked as vegetables, are known as cabbage-palms. The principal of these is _Areca oleracea_, but other species, such as the coco-palm, the royal palm (_Oreodoxa regia_), _Arenga saccharifera_ and others yield similar edible leaf-buds.

CABEIRI, in Greek mythology, a group of minor deities, of whose character and worship nothing certain is known. Their chief seats of worship were the islands of Lemnos, Imbros and Samothrace, the coast of Troas, Thessalia and Boeotia. The name appears to be of Phoenician origin, signifying the "great" gods, and the Cabeiri seem to have been deities of the sea who protected sailors and navigation, as such often identified with the Dioscuri, the symbol of their presence being St Elmo's fire. Originally the Cabeiri were two in number, an older identified with Hephaestus (or Dionysus), and a younger identified with Hermes, who in the Samothracian mysteries was called Cadmilus or Casmilus. Their cult at an early date was united with that of Demeter and Kore, with the result that two pairs of Cabeiri appeared, Hephaestus and Demeter, and Cadmilus and Kore. According to Mnaseas[1] (quoted by the scholiast on Apollonius Rhodius i. 917) they were four in number:--Axieros, Axiokersa, Axiokersos, Casmilus. It is there stated that Axieros is Demeter; Axiokersa, Persephone; Axiokersos, Hades; and Casmilus, Hermes. The substitution of Hades for Hephaestus is due to the fact that Hades was regarded as the husband of Persephone. Cabeiro, who is mentioned in the logographers Acusilaus and Pherecydes as the wife of Hephaestus, is identical with Demeter, who indeed is expressly called [Greek: Kabeiria] in Thebes. Roman antiquarians identified the Cabeiri with the three Capitoline deities or with the Penates. In Lemnos an annual festival of the Cabeiri was held, lasting nine days, during which all the fires were extinguished and fire brought from Delos. From this fact and from the statement of Strabo x. p. 473, that the father of the Cabeiri was Camillus, a son of Hephaestus, the Cabeiri have been thought to be, like the Corybantes, Curetes and Dactyli, demons of volcanic fire. But this view is not now generally held. In Lemnos they fostered the vine and fruits of the field, and from their connexion with Hermes in Samothrace it would also seem that they promoted the fruitfulness of cattle.

By far the most important seat of their worship was Samothrace. Here, as early as the 5th century B.C., their mysteries, possibly under Athenian influence, attracted great attention, and initiation was looked upon as a general safeguard against all misfortune. But it was in the period after the death of Alexander the Great that their cult reached its height. Demetrius Poliorcetes, Lysimachus and Arsinoë regarded the Cabeiri with especial favour, and initiation was sought, not only by large numbers of pilgrims, but by persons of distinction. Initiation included also an asylum or refuge within the strong walls of Samothrace, for which purpose it was used among others by Arsinoë, who, to show her gratitude, afterwards caused a monument to be erected there, the ruins of which were explored in [v.04 p.0917] 1874 by an Austrian archaeological expedition. In 1888 interesting details as to the Boeotian cult of the Cabeiri were obtained by the excavations of their temple in the neighbourhood of Thebes, conducted by the German archaeological institute. The two male deities worshipped were Cabeiros and a boy: the Cabeiros resembles Dionysus, being represented on vases as lying on a couch, his head surrounded with a garland of ivy, a drinking cup in his right hand; and accompanied by maenads and satyrs. The boy is probably his cup-bearer. The Cabeiri were held in even greater esteem by the Romans, who regarded themselves as descendants of the Trojans, whose ancestor Dardanus (himself identified in heroic legend with one of the Cabeiri) came from Samothrace. The identification of the three Capitoline deities with the Penates, and of these with the Cabeiri, tended to increase this feeling.

See C.A. Lobeck, _Aglaophamus_ (1829); F.G. Welcker, _Die Aeschylische Trilogie und die Kabirenweihe zu Lemnos_ (1824); J.P. Rossignol, _Les Métaux dans l'antiquité_ (1863), discussing the gods of Samothrace (the Dactyli, the Cabeiri, the Corybantes, the Curetes, and the Telchines) as workers in metal, and the religious origin of metallurgy; O. Rubensohn, _Die Mysterienheiligtümer in Eleusis und Samothrake_ (1892); W.H. Roscher, _Lexikon der Mythologie_ (_s.v._ "Megaloi Theoi"); L. Preller, _Griechische Mythologie_ (4th ed., appendix); and the article by F. Lenormant in Daremberg and Saglio, _Dictionnaire des Antiquités_.

[1] A grammarian of Patrae in Achaea (or Patara in Lycia), pupil of Eratosthenes (275-195 B.C.), and author of a periplus and a collection of Delphic oracles.

CABER TOSSING (Gaelic _cabar_, a pole or beam), a Scottish athletic exercise which consists in throwing a section of a trunk of a tree, called the "caber," in such a manner that it shall turn over in the air and fall on the ground with its small end pointing in the direction directly opposite to the "tosser." Tossing the caber is usually considered to be a distinctly Scottish sport, although "casting the bar," an exercise evidently similar in character, was popular in England in the 16th century but afterwards died out. The caber is the heavy trunk of a tree from 16 to 20 ft. long. It is often brought upon the field heavier than can be thrown and then cut to suit the contestants, although sometimes cabers of different sizes are kept, each contestant taking his choice. The toss is made after a run, the caber being set up perpendicularly with the heavy end up by assistants on the spot indicated by the tosser, who sets one foot against it, grasps it with both hands, and, as soon as he feels it properly balanced, gives the word to the assistants to let go their hold. He then raises the caber and gets both hands underneath the lower end. "A practised hand, having freed the caber from the ground, and got his hands underneath the end, raises it till the lower end is nearly on a level with his elbows, then advances for several yards, gradually increasing his speed till he is sometimes at a smart run before he gives the toss. Just before doing this he allows the caber to leave his shoulder, and as the heavy top end begins to fall forward, he throws the end he has in his hands upwards with all his strength, and, if successful, after the heavy end strikes the ground the small end continues its upward motion till perpendicular, when it falls forward, and the caber lies in a straight line with the tosser" (W.M. Smith). The winner is he who tosses with the best and easiest style, according to old Highland traditions, and whose caber falls straightest in a direct line from him. In America a style called the Scottish-American prevails at Caledonian games. In this the object is distance alone, the same caber being used by all contestants and the toss being measured from the tosser's foot to the spot where the small end strikes the ground. This style is repudiated in Scotland. Donald Dinnie, born in 1837 and still a champion in 1890, was the best tosser of modern times.

See W.M. Smith, _Athletics and Athletic Sports in Scotland_ (Edinburgh, 1891).

CABET, ÉTIENNE (1788-1856), French communist, was born at Dijon in 1788, the son of a cooper. He chose the profession of advocate, without succeeding in it, but ere long became notable as the persevering apostle of republicanism and communism. He assisted in a secondary way in the revolution of 1830, and obtained the appointment of _procureur-général_ in Corsica under the government of Louis Philippe; but was dismissed for his attack upon the conservatism of the government, in his _Histoire de la révolution de 1830_. Elected, notwithstanding, to the chamber of deputies, he was prosecuted for his bitter criticism of the government, and obliged to go into exile in England in 1834, where he became an ardent disciple of Robert Owen. On the amnesty of 1839 he returned to France, and attracted some notice by the publication of a badly written and fiercely democratic history of the Revolution of 1789 (4 vols., 1840), and of a social romance, _Voyage en Icarie_, in which he set forth his peculiar views. These works met with some success among the radical working-men of Paris. Like Owen, he sought to realize his ideas in practice, and, pressed as well by his friends, he made arrangements for an experiment in communism on American soil. By negotiations in England favoured by Owen, he purchased a considerable tract of land on the Red river, Texas, and drew up an elaborate scheme for the intending colony, community of property being the distinctive principle of the society. Accordingly in 1848 an expedition of 1500 "Icarians" sailed to America; but unexpected difficulties arose and the complaints of the disenchanted settlers soon reached Europe. Cabet, who had remained in France, had more than one judicial investigation to undergo in consequence, but was honourably acquitted. In 1849 he went out in person to America, but on his arrival, finding that the Mormons had been expelled from their city Nauvoo (_q.v._), in Illinois, he transferred his settlement thither. There, with the exception of a journey to France, where he returned to defend himself successfully before the tribunals, he remained, the dictator of his little society. In 1856, however, he withdrew and died the same year at St Louis.

See COMMUNISM. Also Félix Bonnaud, _Cabet et son oeuvre, appel à tous les socialistes_ (Paris, 1900); J. Prudhommeaux, _Icaria and its Founder, Étienne Cabet_ (Nîmes, 1907).

CABIN, a small, roughly built hut or shelter; the term is particularly applied to the thatched mud cottages of the negro slaves of the southern states of the Unites States of America, or of the poverty-stricken peasantry of Ireland or the crofter districts of Scotland. In a special sense it is used of the small rooms or compartments on board a vessel used for sleeping, eating or other accommodation. The word in its earlier English forms was _cabane_ or _caban_, and thus seems to be an adaptation of the French _cabane_; the French have taken _cabine_, for the room on board a ship, from the English. In French and other Romanic languages, in which the word occurs, _e.g._ Spanish _cabaña_, Portuguese _cabana_, the origin is usually found in the Medieval Latin _capanna_. Isidore of Seville (_Origines_, lib. xiv. 12) says:--_Tugurium_ (hut) _parva casula est, quam faciunt sibi custodes vinearum, ad tegimen seu quasi tegurium. Hoc rustici Capannam vocant, quod unum tantum capiat_ (see Du Cange, _Glossarium_, s.v. _Capanna_). Others derive from Greek [Greek: kapê], crib, manger. Skeat considers the English word was taken from the Welsh _caban_, rather than from the French, and that the original source for all the forms was Celtic.

CABINET, a word with various applications which may be traced to two principal meanings, (1) a small private chamber, and (2) an article of furniture containing compartments formed of drawers, shelves, &c. The word is a diminutive of "cabin" and therefore properly means a small hut or shelter. This meaning is now obsolete; the _New English Dictionary_ quotes from Leonard Digges's _Stratioticos_ (published with additions by his son Thomas in 1579), "the Lance Knights encamp always in the field very strongly, two or three to a Cabbonet." From the use both of the article of furniture and of a small chamber for the safe-keeping of a collection of valuable prints, pictures, medals or other objects, the word is frequently applied to such a collection or to objects fit for such safe-keeping. The name of _Cabinet du Roi_ was given to the collection of prints prepared by the best artists of the 17th century by order of Louis XIV. These were intended to commemorate the chief events of his reign, and also to reproduce the paintings and sculptures and other art treasures contained in the royal palaces. It was begun in 1667 and was placed under the superintendence of Nicholas Clement (1647 or 1651-1712), the royal librarian. The collection was published in 1727. The plates are now in the Louvre. A "cabinet" edition [v.04 p.0918] of a literary work is one of somewhat small size, and bound in such a way as would suit a tasteful collection. The term is applied also to a size of photograph of a larger size than the _carte de visite_ but smaller than the "panel." The political use of the term is derived from the private chamber of the sovereign or head of a state in which his advisers met.

_Cabinet in Furniture._--The artificer who constructs furniture is still called a "cabinet-maker," although the manufacture of cabinets, properly so called, is now a very occasional part of his work. Cabinets can be divided into a very large number of classes according to their shape, style, period and country of origin; but their usual characteristic is that they are supported upon a stand, and that they contain a series of drawers and pigeon-holes. The name is, however, now given to many pieces of furniture for the safe-keeping or exhibition of valuable objects, which really answer very little to the old conception of a cabinet. The cabinet represented an evolution brought about by the necessities of convenience, and it appealed to so many tastes and needs that it rapidly became universal in the houses of the gentle classes, and in great measure took the impress of the peoples who adopted it. It would appear to have originated in Italy, probably at the very beginning of the 16th century. In its rudimentary form it was little more than an oblong box, with or without feet, small enough to stand upon a table or chair, filled with drawers and closed with doors. In this early form its restricted dimensions permitted of its use only for the safeguard of jewels, precious stones and sometimes money. One of the earliest cabinets of which we have mention belonged to Francis I. of France, and is described as covered with gilt leather, tooled with mauresque work. As the Renaissance became general these early forms gave place to larger, more elaborate and more architectural efforts, until the cabinet became one of the most sumptuous of household adornments. It was natural that the countries which were earliest and most deeply touched by the Renaissance should excel in the designing of these noble and costly pieces of furniture. The cabinets of Italy, France and the Netherlands were especially rich and monumental. Those of Italy and Flanders are often of great magnificence and of real artistic skill, though like all other furniture their style was often grievously debased, and their details incongruous and bizarre. Flanders and Burgundy were, indeed, their lands of adoption, and Antwerp added to its renown as a metropolis of art by developing consummate skill in their manufacture and adornment. The cost and importance of the finer types have ensured the preservation of innumerable examples of all but the very earliest periods; and the student never ceases to be impressed by the extraordinary variety of the work of the 16th and 17th centuries, and very often of the 18th also. The basis of the cabinet has always been wood, carved, polished or inlaid; but lavish use has been made of ivory, tortoise-shell, and those cut and polished precious stones which the Italians call _pietra dura_. In the great Flemish period of the 17th century the doors and drawers of cabinets were often painted with classical or mythological scenes. Many French and Florentine cabinets were also painted. In many classes the drawers and pigeon-holes are enclosed by folding doors, carved or inlaid, and often painted on the inner sides. Perhaps the most favourite type during a great part of the 16th and 17th centuries--a type which grew so common that it became cosmopolitan--was characterized by a conceit which acquired astonishing popularity. When the folding doors are opened there is disclosed in the centre of the cabinet a tiny but palatial interior. Floored with alternate squares of ebony and ivory to imitate a black and white marble pavement, adorned with Corinthian columns or pilasters, and surrounded by mirrors, the effect, if occasionally affected and artificial, is quite as often exquisite. Although cabinets have been produced in England in considerable variety, and sometimes of very elegant and graceful form, the foreign makers on the whole produced the most elaborate and monumental examples. As we have said, Italy and the Netherlands acquired especial distinction in this kind of work. In France, which has always enjoyed a peculiar genius for assimilating modes in furniture, Flemish cabinets were so greatly in demand that Henry IV. determined to establish the industry in his own dominions. He therefore sent French workmen to the Low Countries to acquire the art of making cabinets, and especially those which were largely constructed of ebony and ivory. Among these workmen were Jean Macé and Pierre Boulle, a member of a family which was destined to acquire something approaching immortality. Many of the Flemish cabinets so called, which were in such high favour in France and also in England, were really _armoires_ consisting of two bodies superimposed, whereas the cabinet proper does not reach to the floor. Pillared and fluted, with panelled sides, and front elaborately carved with masks and human figures, these pieces which were most often in oak were exceedingly harmonious and balanced. Long before this, however, France had its own school of makers of cabinets, and some of their carved work was of the most admirable character. At a somewhat later date André Charles Boulle made many pieces to which the name of cabinet has been more or less loosely given. They were usually of massive proportions and of extreme elaboration of marquetry. The North Italian cabinets, and especially those which were made or influenced by the Florentine school, were grandiose and often gloomy. Conceived on a palatial scale, painted or carved, or incrusted with marble and _pietra dura_, they were intended for the adornment of galleries and lofty bare apartments where they were not felt to be overpowering. These North Italian cabinets were often covered with intarsia or marquetry, which by its subdued gaiety retrieved somewhat their heavy stateliness of form. It is, however, often difficult to ascribe a particular fashion of shape or of workmanship to a given country, since the interchange of ideas and the imports of actual pieces caused a rapid assimilation which destroyed frontiers. The close connexion of centuries between Spain and the Netherlands, for instance, led to the production north and south of work that was not definitely characteristic of either. Spain, however, was more closely influenced than the Low Countries, and contains to this day numbers of cabinets which are not easily to be distinguished from the characteristic ebony, ivory and tortoise-shell work of the craftsmen whose skill was so rapidly acquired by the emissaries of Henry IV. The cabinets of southern Germany were much influenced by the models of northern Italy, but retained to a late date some of the characteristics of domestic Gothic work such as elaborately fashioned wrought-iron handles and polished steel hinges. Often, indeed, 17th-century South Germany work is a curious blend of Flemish and Italian ideas executed in oak and Hungarian ash. Such work, however interesting, necessarily lacks simplicity and repose. A curious little detail of Flemish and Italian, and sometimes of French later 17th-century cabinets, is that the interiors of the drawers are often lined with stamped gold or silver paper, or marbled ones somewhat similar to the "end papers" of old books. The great English cabinet-makers of the 18th century were very various in their cabinets, which did not always answer strictly to their name; but as a rule they will not bear comparison with the native work of the preceding century, which was most commonly executed in richly marked walnut, frequently enriched with excellent marquetry of woods. Mahogany was the dominating timber in English furniture from the accession of George II. almost to the time of the Napoleonic wars; but many cabinets were made in lacquer or in the bright-hued foreign woods which did so much to give lightness and grace to the British style. The glass-fronted cabinet for China or glass was in high favour in the Georgian period, and for pieces of that type, for which massiveness would have been inappropriate, satin and tulip woods, and other timbers with a handsome grain taking a high polish were much used.

(J. P.-B.)

_The Political Cabinet._--Among English political institutions, the "Cabinet" is a conventional but not a legal term employed to describe those members of the privy council who fill the highest executive offices in the state, and by their concerted policy direct the government, and are responsible for all the acts of the crown. The cabinet now always includes the persons filling the following offices, who are therefore called "cabinet ministers," viz.:--the first lord of the treasury, the lord chancellor of England, the lord president of the council, the lord privy seal, the five secretaries of state, the chancellor of the exchequer [v.04 p.0919] and the first lord of the admiralty. The chancellor of the duchy of Lancaster, the postmaster-general, the first commissioner of works, the president of the board of trade, the chief secretary for Ireland, the lord chancellor of Ireland, the president of the local government board, the president of the board of agriculture, and the president of the board of education, are usually members of the cabinet, but not necessarily so. A modern cabinet contains from sixteen to twenty members. It used to be said that a large cabinet is an evil; and the increase in its numbers in recent years has often been criticized. But the modern widening of the franchise has tended to give the cabinet the character of an executive committee for the party in power, no less than that of the prime-minister's consultative committee, and to make such a committee representative it is necessary to include the holders of all the more important offices in the administration, who are generally selected as the influential politicians of the party rather than for special aptitude in the work of the departments.

The word "cabinet," or "cabinet council," was originally employed as a term of reproach. Thus Lord Bacon says, in his essay _Of Counsel_ (xx.), "The doctrine of Italy and practice of France, in some kings' times, hath introduced cabinet councils--a remedy worse than the disease"; and, again, "As for cabinet councils, it may be their motto _Plenus rimarum sum_." Lord Clarendon--after stating that, in 1640, when the great Council of Peers was convened by the king at York, the burden of affairs rested principally on Laud, Strafford and Cottington, with five or six others added to them on account of their official position and ability--adds, "These persons made up the committee of state, which was reproachfully after called the _Juncto_, and enviously then in court the _Cabinet Council_." And in the Second Remonstrance in January 1642, parliament complained "of the managing of the great affairs of the realm in _Cabinet Councils_ by men unknown and not publicly trusted." But this use of the term, though historically curious, has in truth nothing in common with the modern application of it. It meant, at that time, the employment of a select body of favourites by the king, who were supposed to possess a larger share of his confidence than the privy council at large. Under the Tudors, at least from the later years of Henry VIII. and under the Stuarts, the privy council was the council of state or government. During the Commonwealth it assumed that name.

The Cabinet Council, properly so called, dates from the reign of William III. and from the year 1693, for it was not until some years after the Revolution that the king discovered and adopted the two fundamental principles of a constitutional executive government, namely, that a ministry should consist of statesmen holding the same political principles and identified with each other; and, secondly, that the ministry should stand upon a parliamentary basis, that is, that it must command and retain the majority of votes in the legislature. It was long before these principles were thoroughly worked out and understood, and the perfection to which they have been brought in modern times is the result of time, experience and in part of accident. But the result is that the cabinet council for the time being _is_ the government of Great Britain; that all the powers vested in the sovereign (with one or two exceptions) are practically exercised by the members of this body; that all the members of the cabinet are jointly and severally responsible for all its measures, for if differences of opinion arise their existence is unknown as long as the cabinet lasts--when publicly manifested the cabinet is at an end; and lastly, that the cabinet, being responsible to the sovereign for the conduct of executive business, is also collectively responsible to parliament both for its executive conduct and for its legislative measures, the same men being as members of the cabinet the servants of the crown, and as members of parliament and leaders of the majority responsible to those who support them by their votes and may challenge in debate every one of their actions. In this latter sense the cabinet has sometimes been described as a standing committee of both Houses of Parliament.

One of the consequences of the close connexion of the cabinet with the legislature is that it is desirable to divide the strength of the ministry between the two Houses of Parliament. Pitt's cabinet of 1783 consisted of himself in the House of Commons and seven peers. But so aristocratic a government would now be impracticable. In Gladstone's cabinet of 1868, eight, and afterwards nine, ministers were in the House of Commons and six in the House of Lords. Great efforts were made to strengthen the ministerial bench in the Commons, and a new principle was introduced, that the representatives of what are called the spending departments--that is, the secretary of state for war and the first lord of the admiralty--should, if possible, be members of the House which votes the supplies. Disraeli followed this precedent but it has since been disregarded. In Sir H. Campbell-Bannerman's cabinet formed in 1905, six ministers were in the House of Lords and thirteen in the House of Commons.

Cabinets are usually convoked by a summons addressed to "His Majesty's confidential servants" by the prime minister; and the ordinary place of meeting is either at the official residence of the first lord of the treasury in Downing Street or at the foreign office, but they may be held anywhere. No secretary or other officer is present at the deliberations of this council. No official record is kept of its proceedings, and it is even considered a breach of ministerial confidence to keep a private record of what passed in the cabinet, inasmuch as such memoranda may fall into other hands. But on some important occasions, as is known from the _Memoirs of Lord Sidmouth_, the _Correspondence of Earl Grey with King William IV._, and from Sir Robert Peel's _Memoirs_, published by permission of Queen Victoria, cabinet minutes are drawn up and submitted to the sovereign, as the most formal manner in which the advice of the ministry can be tendered to the crown and placed upon record. (See also Sir Algernon West's _Recollections_, 1899.) More commonly, it is the duty of the prime minister to lay the collective opinion of his colleagues before the sovereign, and take his pleasure on public measures and appointments. The sovereign never presides at a cabinet; and at the meetings of the privy council, where the sovereign does preside, the business is purely formal. It has been laid down by some writers as a principle of the British constitution that the sovereign is never present at a discussion between the advisers of the crown; and this is, no doubt, an established fact and practice. But like many other political usages of Great Britain it originated in a happy accident.

King William and Queen Anne always presided at weekly cabinet councils. But when the Hanoverian princes ascended the throne, they knew no English, and were barely able to converse at all with their ministers; for George I. or George II. to take part in, or even to listen to, a debate in council was impossible. When George III. mounted the throne the practice of the independent deliberations of the cabinet was well established, and it has never been departed from.

Upon the resignation or dissolution of a ministry, the sovereign exercises the undoubted prerogative of selecting the person who may be thought by him most fit to form a new cabinet. In several instances the statesmen selected by the crown have found themselves unable to accomplish the task confided to them. But in more favourable cases the minister chosen for this supreme office by the crown has the power of distributing all the political offices of the government as may seem best to himself, subject only to the ultimate approval of the sovereign. The prime minister is therefore in reality the author and constructor of the cabinet; he holds it together; and in the event of his retirement, from whatever cause, the cabinet is really dissolved, even though its members are again united under another head.

AUTHORITIES.--Sir W. Anson, _Law and Custom of the Constitution_ (1896); W. Bagehot, _The English Constitution_; M.T. Blauvelt, _The Development of Cabinet Government in England_ (New York, 1902); E. Boutmy, _The English Constitution_ (trans. I.M. Eaden, 1891); A. Lawrence Lowell, _The Government of England_ (1908),