Part 25

BAZARD, AMAND (1791-1832), French socialist, the founder of a secret society in France corresponding to the Carbonari of Italy, was born at Paris. He took part in the defence of Paris in 1815, and afterwards occupied a subordinate situation in the prefecture of the Seine. About 1820 he united some patriotic friends into a society, called _Amis de la verite_. From this was developed a complete system of Carbonarism, the peculiar principles of which were introduced from Italy by two of Bazard's friends. Bazard himself was at the head of the central body, and, while taking a general lead, contributed extensively to the Carbonarist journal, _L'Aristarque_. An unsuccessful outbreak at Belfort ruined the society, and the leaders were compelled to conceal themselves. Bazard, after remaining for some time in obscurity in Paris, came to the conclusion that the ends of those who wished well to the people would be most easily attained, not through political agitation, but by effecting a radical change in their social condition. This train of thinking naturally drew him towards the socialist philosophers of the school of Saint-Simon, whom he joined. He contributed to their journal, _Le Producteur_; and in 1828 began to give public lectures on the principles of the school (see SAINT-SIMON). His opposition to the emancipation of women brought about a quarrel with Enfantin (q.v.) in 1831, and Bazard found himself almost deserted by the members of the society. He attacked Enfantin violently, and in a warm discussion between them he was struck down by apoplexy. After lingering for a few months he died on the 29th of July 1832.

BAZAS, a town of south-western France, in the department of Gironde, 38-1/2 m. S.S.E. of Bordeaux by rail. Pop. (1906) town, 2505; commune, 4684. The town, which was the seat of a bishop from at least the beginning of the 6th century till 1790, has a Gothic church (formerly the cathedral) dating from the 13th to the 16th centuries. There are remains of ramparts (15th and 16th centuries) and several old houses of the 16th century. The vineyards of the vicinity produce white wine. The town is capital of an arrondissement, and carries on tanning, &c., and trade in the well-known Bazadais cattle.

Bazas (_Cossio_) was capital of the ancient tribe of the _Vasates_, and under the Romans one of the twelve cities of Novempopuluna. In later times it was capital of the district of Bazadais. It was the scene of much bloodshed during the religious wars of the 16th century.

BAZIGARS, a nomad gipsy-folk of India, found throughout the peninsula, and variously known as Bazigars, Panchpiri, Nats, Bediyas, &c. They live a life apart from the surrounding Hindu population, and still preserve a certain ethnical identity, scarcely justified by any indications given by their physique. They make a living as jugglers, dancers, basket-weavers and fortune-tellers; and in true European gipsy fashion each clan has its king.

BAZIN, RENE (1853- ), French novelist and man of letters, was born at Angers on the 26th of December 1853. He studied law in Paris, and on his return to Angers became professor of law in the Catholic university there. He contributed to Parisian journals a series of sketches of provincial life and descriptions of travel, but he made his reputation by _Une Tache d'encre_ (1888), which received a prize from the Academy. Other novels of great charm and delicacy followed: _La Sarcelle bleue_ (1892); _Madame Corentine_ (1893); _Humble Amour_ (1894); _De toute son ame_ (1897); _La Terre qui meurt_ (1899); _Les Oberle_ (1901), an Alsatian story which was dramatized and acted in the following year; _L'Ame alsacienne_ (1903); _Donatienne_ (1903); _L'Isolee_ (1905); _Le Ble qui leve_ (1907); _Memoires d'une vieille fille_ (1908). _La Terre qui meurt_, a picture of the decay of peasant farming and a story of La Vendee, is an indirect plea for the development of provincial France. A volume of _Questions litteraires et sociales_ appeared in 1906. Rene Bazin was admitted to the Academy on the 28th of April 1904.

BAZIRE, CLAUDE (1764-1794), French revolutionist, was deputy for the Cote d'Or in the Legislative Assembly, and made himself prominent by denouncing the court and the "Austrian committee" of the Tuileries. On the 20th of June 1792 he spoke in favour of the deposition of the king. In the Convention he sat with the Mountain, opposed adjourning the trial of Louis XVI., and voted for his death. He joined in the attack upon the Girondists, but, as member of the committee of general security, he condemned the system of the Terror. He was implicated by Francois Chabot in the falsification of a decree relative to the East India Company, and though his share seems to have been simply that he did not reveal the plot, of which he knew but part, he was accused before the Revolutionary Tribunal at the same time as Danton and Camille Desmoulins, and was executed on the 5th of April 1794.

BDELLIUM ([Greek: bdellion], used by Pliny and Dioscorides as the name of a plant which exuded a fragrant gum), a name applied to several gums or gum-resins that simulate and are sometimes found as adulterants of true myrrh (q.v.).

BEACH, a word of unknown origin; probably an old dialect word meaning shingle, hence, by transference, the place covered by shingle. Beach sometimes denotes the material thrown up by the waves, sometimes the long resulting ridge, but more frequently the area between high and low water, or even the area between land and sea covered with material thrown up by exceptional storms.

The actual character of beach material depends upon the nature and structure of the rocks inshore, the strength and direction of currents, and the force of the waves. The southern shore of the Isle of Wight furnishes a good example. The island ends westward in the well-known "Needles," consisting of chalk with flints. The disintegration of this rock by wave action separates the finer chalk, which is carried seawards in suspension, from the hard flint, which is piled in rough shingle upon the shore. The currents sweep constantly eastward up channel, and the rough flint shingle is rolled along by wave action toward the Ventnor rampart, and ground finer and finer until it arrives as a very fine flinty gravel at Ventnor pier. The sweep of Sandown Bay follows, where the cliffs are composed for the most part of greensand, and here the beach at low water is sandy and smooth. The eastern end of the island is again composed of chalk with flints, and here the beach material as at the western end consists of very coarse flint shingle. In this, as in similar cases, the material has been dragged seawards from the land by constant action of the undertow that accompanies each retreating tide and each returning wave. The resulting accumulated ridge is battered by every storm, and thrown above ordinary high-water mark in a ridge such as the Chesil Bank or the long grass-grown mound that has blocked the old channel of the Yar and diverted its waters into Yaverland Bay. Sandown furnishes an instructive example of the power of the eastward currents carrying high-storm waves. The groins built to preserve the foreshore are piled to the top with coarse shingle on the western side, while there is a drop of over 8 ft. on to the sands east of the wall, many thousands of tons of shingle having been moved bodily by the waves and deposited against each groin. The force of the waves has been measured on the west coast of Scotland and found to be as much as 3 tons per square foot. Against these forces the preservation of the shore from the advance of the sea becomes an extremely difficult and often a hopeless undertaking, since blocks of rock over 100 tons in weight have been moved by the waves. The beach is therefore unstable in its position. It advances in front of the encroaching sea, burying former beaches under the sand and mud of the now deeper water, or it retreats when the sea is withdrawn from the land or the land rises locally, leaving the old shingle stranded in a "raised beach," but its formation is in all cases due to the form and structure of the shore, the sapping

## action of the waves, the backward drag of the undertow plastering the

shore with material, which is in turn bombarded by waves and swept by currents that cover the finer debris of the undertow with a layer of coarse fragments that are re-sorted by the daily action of currents and tides.

BEACHY HEAD, a promontory on the coast of Sussex, England, S.W. of Eastbourne, about 3 m. from the centre of the town. It consists of a perpendicular chalk cliff 532 ft. high, and forms the eastern termination of the hill-range known as the South Downs. The old Bell Tout lighthouse, 285 ft. above high-water mark, erected in 1831 on the second cliff to the westward, in 0 deg. 10' 18" E., 50 deg. 43' 30" N., has been superseded by a new lighthouse built in the sea at the foot of the head itself.

_Battle of Beachy Head._--This naval battle, known to the French as Bevisier (a corruption of Pevensey), was fought on the 30th of June 1690. An allied force of 37 British sail of the line, under command of the earl of Torrington (Arthur Herbert), and of 22 Dutch under C. Evertsen, was at anchor under the headland, while a French fleet of over 70 sail, commanded by the comte de Tourville, was anchored some miles off to the south-west. The French fleet had orders to co-operate with an expected Jacobite rising in England. Torrington, to whom the general direction of the allied fleet belonged, was much disturbed by the enemy's superiority in number, and on the 26th had written to the Council of Regency suggesting that he ought to retire to the Gunfleet at the mouth of the Thames, and observe the enemy from a distance till he could be reinforced. The council, which had the support of Admiral Russell, afterwards earl of Orford, considered that a retreat to the Gunfleet would have fatal consequences, by which they no doubt meant that it would leave the French free to land troops for the support of the Jacobites. They therefore ordered Herbert not to lose sight of the enemy, but rather to fight if he could secure an advantage of position. The admiral, who was on very bad terms with the council, elected to treat this as a peremptory order to fight. At daybreak on the 30th he got under way and bore down on the enemy. The wind was at north-east and gave him the weather-gage. As his fleet was only 57 sail in all he was not able to engage the enemy from end to end, but as the French were arranged in a line from east to west he could have fallen on the end nearest him, and could have guarded himself by telling off a part of his ships to watch the remainder. Torrington preferred to bring his fleet down in such a way that his van, consisting of the Dutch ships, should be opposite the enemy's van, his centre opposite their centre, and his rear should engage their rear. The inferiority of the allies in numbers made it therefore inevitable that there should be gaps between the different divisions. As the fleets actually did come to action, the Dutch with a few English ships pressed on the French van, their leading ship being abreast of the ninth or tenth Frenchman. Torrington took his station opposite the rear of the French centre, leaving a great gap between himself and the ships in the van. Being apprehensive that the French centre would tack and pass this gap so as to put him between two fires, he kept a long way off so as to be free to manoeuvre against them if they made the attempt. The English rear division, consisting of the English blue squadron under Sir Ralph Delaval, fought a close action with the French opposite to them. In the meantime the French ships, ahead of the leading Dutchman, succeeded in turning to windward and putting part of Evertsen's squadron between two fires. The Dutch ships suffered heavily, and one of them which was dismasted drifted among the French and was taken. More severe loss would have followed if the better average seamanship of the English and Dutch had not stood them in good stead. The tide turned from flood to ebb during the action, and the surface current which in the Channel sets to the west with the ebb began to carry the fleets with it. The Dutch and English dropped anchor. The French, who were not equally alert, did not and were carried westward. When the tide turned the allies retreated to the Thames, abandoning several of the most damaged ships in Pevensey Bay. The pursuit of the French was ineffective, for Tourville persisted in keeping his ships in line of battle, which forced them to regulate their speed by the slowest among them. Torrington was tried for his conduct but acquitted.

A full account of the battle of Beachy Head, written with ample quotation of documents, and for the purpose of vindicating Herbert, will be found in Admiral Colomb's _Naval Warfare_ (London, 1899). (D. H.)

BEACON (from the O. Eng. _beacn_, a sign, cf. "beckon," another form of the same word), a signal, especially a fire lit on a high hill, structure or building for the purpose of sending a message of alarm or of important news over long distances. Such was the courier-fire ([Greek: aggaros pur]) that brought the news of the fall of Troy to Argos (Aeschylus, _Agamemnon_), or the chain of signals that told of the approach of the Spanish Armada, or which circled the British Isles in the jubilee years of 1887 and 1897. The word occurs in many names for lofty and conspicuous hills, such as Dunkery Beacon in Somerset, the highest point on Exmoor. On many such hills the remains of old beacon towers and cressets are still found. The word is used generally of a lighthouse, but technically it means either a small unattended light, a superstructure on a floating buoy, such as a staff and cage, or staff and globe, or an unlighted structure, forming a conspicuous object at sea, used in each case to guide or warn sailors. (See LIGHTHOUSE and BUOY.)

BEACONSFIELD, BENJAMIN DISRAELI, EARL OF (1804-1881), British statesman, second child and eldest son of Isaac D'Israeli (q.v.) and Maria Basevi, who were married in 1802, was born at No. 6 John Street, Bedford Row, on the 21st of December 1804. Of Isaac D'Israeli's other children, Sarah was born in 1802, Naphtali in 1807, Ralph (Raphael) in 1809, and James (Jacob) in 1813. None of the family was akin to Benjamin for genius and character, except Sarah, to whom he was deeply indebted for a wise, unswerving and sympathetic devotion, when, in his earlier days, he needed it most. All Isaac D'Israeli's children were born into the Jewish communion, in which, however, they were not to grow up. It is a reasonable inference from Isaac's character that he was never at ease in the ritual of Judaism. His father died in the winter of 1816, and soon afterwards Isaac formally withdrew with all his household from the Jewish church. His son Benjamin, who had been admitted to it with the usual rites eight days after his birth, was baptized at St Andrew's church in Holborn on the 31st of July 1817. One of Isaac D'Israeli's reasons for quitting the tents of his people was that rabbinical Judaism, with its unyielding laws and fettering ceremonies, "cuts off the Jews from the great family of mankind." Little did he know, when therefore he cut off the D'Israeli family from Judaism, what great things he was doing for one small member of it. The future prime minister was then short of thirteen years old, and there was yet time to provide the utmost freedom which his birth allowed for the faculties and ambitions he was born with. Taking the worldly view alone, of course, most fortunate for his aspirations in youth was his withdrawal from Judaism in childhood. That it was fully sanctioned by his intellect at maturity is evident; but the vindication of unbiased choice would not have been readily accepted had Disraeli abandoned Judaism of his own will at the pushing _Vivian Grey_ period or after. And though a mind like Disraeli's might work to satisfaction with Christianity as "completed Judaism," it could but dwell on a breach of continuity which means so much to Jews and which he was never allowed to forget amongst Christians. With all, he was proud of his race as truly, if not as vehemently, as his paternal grandmother detested it. Family pride contributed to the feeling in his case; for in his more speculative moods he could look back upon an ancestry which was of those, perhaps, who colonized the shores of the Mediterranean from before the time of the Captivity. More definite is the history of descent from an ennobled Spanish family which escaped from the Torquemada persecutions to Venice, there found a new home, took a new name, and prospered for six generations. The Benjamin D'Israeli, Lord Beaconsfield's grandfather, who came to England in 1748, was a younger son sent at eighteen to try his fortune in London. "A man of ardent character, sanguine, courageous, speculative, fortunate, with a temper which no disappointment could disturb" (so Lord Beaconsfield described him), he soon made the beginnings of a handsome fortune and turned country gentleman. That his grandson exaggerated his prosperity is highly probable; but that he became a man of wealth and consideration is certain. He married twice. His second wife was Sarah Siprout de Gabay, "a beautiful woman of strong intellect" and importunate ambitions, who hated the race she belonged to because it was despised by others. She felt so keenly the social disabilities it brought upon her, and her husband's indifference to them, that "she never pardoned him his name." Her literary son Isaac suffered equally or even more; for though he had ambitions he had none that she could recognize as such. She could ridicule him for the aspirations which he had not and for those which he had; on the other hand, he never heard from her a tender word "though she lived to be eighty." Nor did any other member of her family, according to her grandson.

"The Representative."

Isaac D'Israeli was devoted to the reading and writing of books in domestic quiet; and his son Benjamin suffered appreciably from his father's gentle preoccupations. As a child--unruly and disturbing no doubt--he was sent to a school of small account at Blackheath, and was there "for years" before he was recalled at the age of twelve on the death of his grandfather. Isaac D'Israeli was his father's sole heritor, but change of fortune seems to have awakened in him no ambitions for the most hopeful of his sons. At fifteen, not before, Benjamin was sent to a Unitarian school at Walthamstow--a well-known school, populous enough to be a little world of emulation and conflict but otherwise unfit. Not there, nor in any similar institution at that illiberal time, perhaps, was a Jewish boy likely to make a fortunate entry into "the great family of mankind." His name, the foreign look of him, and some pronounced incompatibilities not all chargeable to young Disraeli (as afterwards the name came to be spelt), soon raised a crop of troubles. His stay at Walthamstow was brief, his departure abrupt, and he went to school no more. With the run of his father's library, and the benefits of that born bookman's guidance, he now set out to educate himself. This he did with an industry stiffened by matchless self-confidence and by ambitions fully mature before he was eighteen. Yet he yielded to an attempt to make a man of business of him. He was barely seventeen when (in November 1821) he was taken into the office of Messrs Swain, Stevens and Co., solicitors, in Frederick's Place, Old Jewry. Here he remained for three years--"most assiduous in his attention to business," said one of the partners, "and showing great ability in the transaction of it." It was then determined that he should go to the bar; and accordingly he was entered at Lincoln's Inn in 1824. But Disraeli had found other studies and an alien use for his pen. Though "assiduous in his attention to business" in Frederick's Place, he found time to write for the printer. Dr Smiles, in his _Memoirs of John Murray_, tells of certain pamphlets on the brightening prospects of the Spanish South American colonies, then in the first enjoyment of emancipation--pamphlets seemingly written for a Mr Powles, head of a great financial firm, whose acquaintance Disraeli had made. In the same year, apparently, he wrote a novel--his first, and never published. _Aylmer Papillon_ was the title of it, Dr Smiles informs us; and he prints a letter from Disraeli to the John Murray of that day, which indicates its character pretty clearly. The last chapter, its author says, is taken up with "Mr Papillon's banishment under the Alien Act, from a ministerial misconception of a metaphysical sonnet." About the same time he edited a _History of Paul Jones_, originally published in America, the preface of the English edition being Disraeli's first appearance as an author. Murray could not publish _Aylmer Papillon_, but he had great hopes of its boyish writer (Isaac D'Israeli was an old friend of his), "took him into his confidence, and related to him his experiences of men and affairs." Disraeli had not completed his twenty-first year when (in 1825) Murray was possessed by the idea of bringing out a great daily newspaper; and if his young friend did not inspire that idea he keenly urged its execution, and was entrusted by Murray with the negotiation of all manner of preliminaries, including the attempt to bring Lockhart in as editor. The title of the paper, _The Representative_, was Disraeli's suggestion. He chose reporters, looked to the setting-up of a printing-office, busied himself in all ways to Murray's great satisfaction, and, as fully appears from Dr Smiles's account of the matter, with extraordinary address. But when these arrangements were brought to the point of completion, Disraeli dropped out of the scheme and had nothing more to do with it. He was to have had a fourth share of the proprietorship, bringing in a corresponding amount of capital. His friend Mr Powles, whom he had enlisted for the enterprise, was to have had a similar share on the same conditions. Neither seems to have paid up, and that, perhaps, had to do with the quarrel which parted Benjamin Disraeli and John Murray before a sheet of the luckless _Representative_ was printed. Many years afterwards (1853) Disraeli took an active interest in _The Press_, a weekly journal of considerable merit but meagre fortunes.

"Vivan Grey."