Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, "Bohemia" to "Borgia, Francis" / Volume 4, Slice 2 Papyras Classics

← Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, "Bohemia" to "Borgia, Francis" / Volume 4, Slice 2

Chapter 5

Volume IV Slice II Bohemia to Borgia, Francis (part 4)

With a view still further to split up the work, thus enabling a large staff to be simultaneously engaged, the ledger itself is now generally kept in sections. Thus the cash account and the bank account are frequently bound together in one separate book called the cash book, showing in parallel columns the movements of office cash and of cash at the bank, and by the addition of a third column for discounts the necessity of keeping an additional book of first entry as a discount journal may also be avoided. Of late years, however, most businesses pay all moneys received into their bankers without deduction, and pay all accounts by cheque; the necessity of an account for office cash thus no longer exists, save in connexion with petty payments, which are recorded in a separate book called the petty cash book. With regard to the remaining ledger accounts, personal accounts—which are the most numerous—are frequently separated from the real and nominal accounts, and are further subdivided so that customers’ accounts are kept separate from the accounts of trade creditors. The customers’ accounts are kept in a ledger (or, if need be, in several ledgers) called sales ledgers, or sold ledgers; while the accounts of trade creditors are similarly kept in purchases ledgers or bought ledgers. The nominal and real accounts, if together, are kept in what is called the general ledger; but this may be further subdivided into a nominal ledger and a private ledger. This last subdivision is, however, rarely made upon a scientific basis, for such accounts as the profit and loss account and trading account are generally kept in the private ledger although strictly speaking nominal accounts; while the bills receivable account and the bills payable account are generally kept in the nominal ledger, so as to reduce to a minimum the amount of clerical work in connexion with the private ledger, which is kept either by the principal himself or by his confidential employee. By the employment of adjustment accounts, which complete the double-entry record in each ledger, these various ledgers may readily be made self-balancing, thus enabling clerical errors to be localized and responsibility enforced.

Of recent years considerable attention has been devoted to further modifications of book-keeping methods with a view to reducing clerical work, increasing the speed with which results are available, and enabling them to be handled more quickly and with greater certainty. Tabular book-keeping is a device to achieve one or more of these ends by the substitution of books ruled with numerous columns for the more usual form. The system may be applied either to books of first entry or to ledgers. As applied to books of first-entry it enables the same book to deal conveniently with more than one class of transaction; thus if the trading of a business is divided into several departments, by providing a separate column for the sales of each department it is possible readily to arrive at separate totals for the aggregate sales of each, thus simplifying the preparation of departmental trading accounts. As applied to ledgers, the application of the system may be best described by the aid of the above example (the proceedings of the columns being given only), which shows how a very large number of personal accounts may be recorded upon a single opening of a ledger provided the number of entries to be made against each individual be few.

Reference
No. Name of
Debtor. Amount
due on
1st Oct.
1906 Charges
for
Current
Quarter. Total
Debit. Date
received. Amount
Received. Discounts. Allowances. Bad
Debts. Amount
due on
31st Dec.
1906 Remarks.

£ s. d. £ s. d. £ s. d. £ s. d. £ s. d. £ s. d. £ s. d. £ s. d.

Another important application of modern methods consists of what may be described as the slip system, which is in many respects a reversion to the method of keeping records upon movable slabs or tablets, as in the Babylonian accounts referred to at the beginning of this article. This system may be applied to books of first-entry, or to ledgers, or to both. As applied to books of first-entry it aims at so modifying the original record of the transaction—whether it represents an invoice for goods sold or an acknowledgment given for money received—that a facsimile duplicate may be taken of the original entry by the aid of a carbon sheet, which instead of being immovably bound up in a book is capable of being handled separately and placed in any desired order or position, and thus more readily recorded in the ledger. Postings are thus made direct from the original slips, which have been first sorted out into an order convenient for that purpose, and afterwards resorted so that the total sales of each department may be readily computed; after which they are filed away in a form convenient for reference. Sometimes the process is carried a step further, and the original slips, filed away with suitable guide-cards indicating the nature of the account, themselves constitute the ledger record—which in such cases is to be found scattered over a number of sheets, one for each transaction, instead of, as in the case of the ordinary book ledger, a considerable number of transactions being recorded upon a single page. This adaptation of the slip system is impracticable except in cases where the transactions with each individual are few in number, and is not worth adoption unless the exceedingly large number of personal accounts makes it important as far as possible to avoid all duplication of clerical work. The more usual adaptation of the slip system to ledgers is to be found in the employment of card ledgers or loose-leaf ledgers. With card ledgers (fig. 1) each ledger account is upon an independent sheet of cardboard suitably arranged in drawers or cabinets. The system is advantageous as allowing all dead matter to be eliminated from the record continuously in use, and as permitting the order in which the accounts stand to be varied from time to time as convenience dictates, thus (if necessary) enabling the accounts to be always kept in alphabetical order in spite of the addition of new accounts and the dropping out of old ones. An especial convenience of the card system is that in times of pressure any desired number of book-keepers may be simultaneously employed, whereas the maximum number that can be usefully employed upon any bound book is two. The loose-leaf ledger (fig. 2) may be described as midway between card and bound ledgers. It consists of a number of sheets in book form, so bound as to be capable of being readily separated when desired. The loose-leaf ledger thus embraces most of the advantages of the card ledger, while remaining sufficiently like the more old-fashioned book ledger as to enable it to be readily handled by those whose previous experience has been confined to the latter. Both the card and loose-leaf systems will be frequently found of value for records in connexion with cost and stores accounts, quite irrespective of their advantages in connexion with the book-keeping records pure and simple of certain businesses.

All book-keeping methods rest upon the same fundamental principles, but their development in practice in different countries is to some extent influenced by the manner in which business is there conducted, and by the legislative requirements imposed by the several states. In France traders are required by the Code of Commerce to keep three books—a journal, an inventory and a letter book, somewhat elaborate provisions being made to identify these books, and to prevent substitution. The compulsory journal makes the employment of numerous books of first-entry impossible without an undesirable amount of duplication, and wherever this provision obtains the book-keeping methods are in an accordingly comparatively backward state. The inventory book comprises periodical lists of ledger balances and the balance sheet, records which are invariably kept under every adequate system, although not always in a book specially set aside for that purpose. In Germany the statutory requirements are similar to those in France, save that the journal is not compulsory; but there is an additional provision that the accounts are to be kept in bound books with the pages numbered consecutively—a requirement which makes the introduction of card or loose-leaf ledgers of doubtful legality. A balance sheet must be drawn up every year; but where a stock-in-trade is from its nature or its size difficult to take, it is sufficient for an inventory to be taken every two years. In Belgium the law requires every merchant to keep a journal recording his transactions from day to day, which (with the balance book) must be initialled by a prescribed officer. All letters and telegrams received, and copies of all such sent, must be preserved for ten years. The Commercial Code of Spain requires an inventory, journal, ledger, letter book and invoice book to be kept; while that of Portugal prescribes the use of a balance book, journal, ledger and copy-letter book. The law of Holland requires business men to keep books in which are correctly recorded their commercial transactions, letters received and copies of letters sent. It also provides for the preparation of an annual balance sheet. The law of Rumania makes the employment of journal, inventory book and ledger compulsory, a small tax per page being charged on the two first named. There are no special provisions as to book-keeping contained in the Russian law, nor in the United States law, but in Russia public companies have to supply the government with copies of their annual accounts, which are published in a state newspaper, and in the United States certain classes of companies have to submit their accounts to an official audit. In general terms it may be stated that at the present time the employment of card and loose-leaf ledger systems is more general in the United States than in Great Britain.

Apart from the organizations of professional accountants, there is none of note devoted to the scientific study of book-keeping other than purely educational institutions. Among the universities those in the United States were the first to include accounting as part of their curriculum; while in Great Britain the London School of Economics (university of London), the university of Birmingham, and the Victoria University of Manchester have, so far, alone treated the subject seriously and upon adequate lines. Quite recently Japan has been making a movement in the same direction, and other countries will doubtless follow suit. In England there have for a number of years past been various bodies—such for instance as the Society of Arts, the London Chamber of Commerce and Owens College, Manchester—which hold examinations in book-keeping and grant diplomas to successful candidates, while most of the polytechnics and technical schools give instruction in book-keeping; these latter, however, for the most part regard it as a “craft” merely.

Authorities.—Those interested in the bibliography of book-keeping are referred to the catalogue of the library of the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales, which probably contains the most complete collection in existence of ancient and modern works on accounting, both British and foreign. The following short list comprises those most likely to be found of general interest: G. van de Linde, Book-keeping (1898); L.R. Dicksee, Book-keeping (5th ed., 1906) and Advanced Accounting (2nd ed., 1905); Encyclopaedia of Accounting, ed. by G. Lisle (1903); Accountants’ Library, ed. by the editor of The Accountant (1901); J.W. Heaps, The Antiquity of Book-keeping (1898); History of Accounting and Accountants, ed. by R. Brown (1905).

(L. R. D.)


BOOK-PLATES. The book-plate, or ex-libris, a printed label intended to indicate ownership in individual volumes, is nearly as old as the printed book itself. It bears very much the same relation to the hand-painted armorial or otherwise symbolical personal device found in medieval manuscripts that the printed page does to the scribe’s work. The earliest known examples of book-plates are German. According to Friedrich Warnecke, of Berlin (one of the best authorities on the subject), the oldest movable ex-libris are certain woodcuts representing a shield of arms supported by an angel (fig. 1), which were pasted in books presented to the Carthusian monastery of Buxheim by Brother Hildebrand Brandenburg of Biberach, about the year 1480—the date being fixed by that of the recorded gift. The woodcut, in imitation of similar devices in old MSS., is hand-painted. In France the most ancient ex-libris as yet discovered is that of one Jean Bertaud de la Tour-Blanche, the date of which is 1529; and in England that of Sir Nicholas Bacon, a gift-plate for the books he presented to the university of Cambridge (fig. 2). Holland comes next with the plate of a certain Anna van der Aa, in 1597; then Italy with one attributed to the year 1622. The earliest known American example is the plain printed label of one John Williams, 1679.

A sketch of the history of the book-plate, either as a minor work of symbolical and decorative art, or as an accessory to the binding of books, must obviously begin in Germany, not only because the earliest examples known are German, but also because they are found in great numbers long before the fashion spread to other countries, and are often of the highest artistic interest. Albrecht Dürer is known to have actually engraved at least six plates (some of very important size) between 1503 and 1516 (fig. 3), and to have supplied designs for many others. Several notable plates are ascribed to Lucas Cranach and to Hans Holbein, and to that bevy of so-called Little Masters, the Behams, Virgil Solis, Matthias Zundt, Jost Amman, Saldörfer, Georg Hüpschmann and others. The influence of these draughtsmen over the decorative styles of Germany has been felt through subsequent centuries down to the present day, notwithstanding the invasion of successive Italian and French fashions during the 17th and 18th centuries, and the marked effort at originality of composition observable among modern designers. The heavy, over-elaborated German style never seems to have affected neighbouring countries; but since it was undoubtedly from Germany that was spread the fashion of ornamental book-plates as marks of possession, the history of German ex-libris remains on that account one of high interest to all those who are curious in the matter.

It was not before the 17th century that the movable ex-libris became tolerably common in France. Up to that time the more luxurious habit of stamping the cover with a personal device had been in such general favour with book-owners as to render the use of labels superfluous. From the middle of the century, however, the ex-libris proper became quite naturalized; examples of that period are very numerous, and, as a rule, are very handsome. It may be here pointed out that the expression ex-libris, used as a substantive, which is now the recognized term for book-plate everywhere on the continent, found its origin in France. The words only occur in the personal tokens of other nationalities long after they had become a recognized inscription on French labels.

In many ways the consideration of the English book-plate, in its numerous styles, from the late Elizabethan to the late Victorian period, is peculiarly interesting. In all its varieties it reflects with great fidelity the prevailing taste in decorative art at different epochs. Of English examples, none thus far seems to have been discovered of older date than the gift-plate of Sir Nicholas Bacon; for the celebrated, gorgeous, hand-painted armorial device attached to a folio that once belonged to Henry VIII., and now reposes in the King’s library, British Museum, does not come under the head of book-plate in its modern sense. The next is that of Sir Thomas Tresham, dated 1585. Until the last quarter of the 17th century the number of authentic English plates is very limited. Their composition is always remarkably simple, and displays nothing of the German elaborateness. They are as a rule very plainly armorial, and the decoration is usually limited to a symmetrical arrangement of mantling, with an occasional display of palms or wreaths. Soon after the Restoration, however, a book-plate seems to have suddenly become an established accessory to most well-ordered libraries. Book-plates of that period offer very distinctive characteristics. In the simplicity of their heraldic arrangements they recall those of the previous age; but their physiognomy is totally different. In the first place, they invariably display the tincture lines and dots, after the method originally devised in the middle of the century by Petra Sancta, the author of Tesserae Gentilitiae, which by this time had become adopted throughout Europe. In the second, the mantling assumes a much more elaborate appearance—one that irresistibly recalls that of the periwig of the period—surrounding the face of the shield. This style was undoubtedly imported from France, but it assumed a character of its own in England. As a matter of fact, thenceforth until the dawn of the French Revolution, English modes of decoration in book-plates, as in most other chattels, follow at some years’ distance the ruling French taste. The main characteristics of the style which prevailed during the Queen Anne and early Georgian periods are:—ornamental frames suggestive of carved oak, a frequent use of fish-scales, trellis or diapered patterns, for the decoration of plain surfaces; and, in the armorial display, a marked reduction in the importance of the mantling. The introduction of the scallop-shell as an almost constant element of ornamentation gives already a foretaste of the Rocaille-Coquille, the so-called Chippendale fashions of the next reign. As a matter of fact, during the middle third of the century this rococo style (of which the Convers plate [fig. 4] gives a tolerably typical sample) affects the book-plate as universally as all other decorative objects. Its chief element is a fanciful arrangement of scroll and shell work with curveting acanthus-like sprays—an arrangement which in the examples of the best period is generally made asymmetrical in order to give freer scope for a variety of countercurves. Straight or concentric lines and all appearances of flat surface are studiously avoided; the helmet and its symmetrical mantling tends to disappear, and is replaced by the plain crest on a fillet. The earlier examples of this manner are tolerably ponderous and simple. Later, however, the composition becomes exceedingly light and complicated; every conceivable and often incongruous element of decoration is introduced, from cupids to dragons, from flowerets to Chinese pagodas. During the early part of George III.’s reign there is a return to greater sobriety of ornamentation, and a style more truly national, which may be called the urn style, makes its appearance. Book-plates of this period have invariably a physiognomy which at once recalls the decorative manner made popular by architects and designers such as Chambers, the Adams, Josiah Wedgwood, Hepplewhite and Sheraton. The shield shows a plain spade-like outline, manifestly based upon that of the pseudo-classic urn then so much to the fore. The ornamental accessories are symmetrical palms and sprays, wreaths and ribands. The architectural boss is also an important factor. In many plates, indeed, the shield of arms takes quite a subsidiary position by the side of the predominantly architectural urn. From the beginning of the 19th century, until comparatively recent days, no special style of decoration seems to have established itself. The immense majority of examples display a plain shield of arms with motto on a scroll below, and crest on a fillet above. Of late years, however, a rapid impetus appears to have been given to the designing of ex-libris; a new era, in fact, has begun for the book-plate, one of great interest.

The main styles of decoration (and these, other data being absent, must always in the case of old examples remain the criteria of date) have already been noticed. It is, however, necessary to point out that certain styles of composition were also prevalent at certain periods. Many of the older plates (like the majority of the most modern ones) were essentially pictorial. Of this kind the best-defined English genus may be recalled: the library interior—a term which explains itself—and book-piles, exemplified by the ex-libris (fig. 6) of W. Hewer, Samuel Pepys’s secretary. We have also many portrait-plates, of which, perhaps, the most notable are those of Samuel Pepys himself and of John Gibbs, the architect; allegories, such as were engraved by Hogarth, Bartolozzi, John Pine and George Vertue; landscape-plates, by wood engravers of the Bewick school (see Plate), &c. In most of these the armorial element plays but a secondary part.

The value attached to book-plates, otherwise than as an object of purely personal interest, is comparatively modern. The study of and the taste for collecting these private tokens of book-ownership hardly date farther back than the year 1875. The first real impetus was given by the appearance of the Guide to the Study of Book-Plates, by Lord de Tabley (then the Hon. Leicester Warren) in 1880. This work, highly interesting from many points of view, established what is now accepted as the general classification of styles: early armorial (i.e. previous to Restoration, exemplified by the Nicholas Bacon plate); Jacobean, a somewhat misleading term, but distinctly understood to include the heavy decorative manner of the Restoration, Queen Anne and early Georgian days (the Lansanor plate, fig. 5, is typically Jacobean); Chippendale (the style above described as rococo, tolerably well represented by the French plate of Convers); wreath and ribbon, belonging to the period described as that of the urn, &c. Since then the literature on the subject has grown considerably. Societies of collectors have been founded, first in England, then in Germany and France, and in the United States, most of them issuing a journal or archives: The Journal of the Ex-libris Society (London), the Archives de la société française de collectionneurs d’ex-libris (Paris), both of these monthlies; the Ex-libris Zeitschrift (Berlin), a quarterly.

Much has been written for and against book-plate collecting. If, on the one hand, the more enthusiastic ex-librists (for such a word has actually been coined) have made the somewhat ridiculous claim of science for “ex-librisme,” the bitter animadversion, on the other, of a certain class of intolerant bibliophiles upon the vandalism of removing book-plates from old books has at times been rather extravagant. Book-plates are undoubtedly very often of high interest (and of a value often far greater than the odd volume in which they are found affixed), either as specimens of bygone decorative fashion or as personal relics of well-known personages. There can be no question, for instance, that engravings or designs by artists such as Holbein and Dürer and the Little Masters of Germany, by Charles Eisen, Hubert François Bourguignon, dit Gravelot, D.N. Chodowiecki or Simon Gribelin; by W. Marshall, W. Faithorne, David Loggan, Sir Robert Strange, Francesco Piranesi; by Hogarth, Cipriani, Bartolozzi, John Keyse Sherwin, William Henshaw, Hewitt or Bewick and his imitators; or, to come to modern times, that the occasional examples traced to the handicraft of Thomas Stothard, Thackeray, Millais, Maclise, Bell Scott, T.G. Jackson, Walter Crane, Caldecott, Stacy Marks, Edwin Abbey, Kate Greenaway, Gordon Browne, Herbert Railton, Aubrey Beardsley, Alfred Parsons, D.Y. Cameron, Paul Avril—are worth collecting.

Plate.

Until the advent of the new taste the devising of book-plates was almost invariably left to the routine skill of the heraldic stationer. Of late years the composition of personal book-tokens has become recognized as a minor branch of a higher art, and there has come into fashion an entirely new class of designs which, for all their wonderful variety, bear as unmistakable a character as that of the most definite styles of bygone days. Broadly speaking, it may be said that the purely heraldic element tends to become subsidiary and the allegorical or symbolic to assert itself more strongly. Among modern English artists who have more specially paid attention to the devising of book-plates, and have produced admirable designs, may be mentioned C.W. Sherborn, G.W. Eve, Robert Anning Bell, J.D. Batten, Erat Harrison, J. Forbes Nixon, Charles Ricketts, John Vinycomb, John Leighton and Warrington Hogg. The development in various directions of process work, by facilitating and cheapening the reproduction of beautiful and elaborate designs, has no doubt helped much to popularize the book-plate—a thing which in older days was almost invariably restricted to ancestral libraries or to collections otherwise important. Thus the great majority of modern plates are reproduced by process. There are, however, a few artists left who devote to book-plates their skill with the graver. Some of the work they produce challenges comparison with the finest productions of bygone engravers. Of these the best-known are C.W. Sherborn (see Plate) and G.W. Eve in England, and in America J.W. Spenceley of Boston, Mass., K.W.F. Hopson of New Haven, Conn., and E.D. French of New York City (see Plate).

Authorities.—The curious in the matter of book-plate composition will find it treated in the various volumes of the Ex-libris Series (London). See also A. Poulet-Malassis, Les Ex-libris français (1875); Hon. J. Leicester Warren (Lord de Tabley), A Guide to the Study of Book-plates (1880); Sir A.W. Franks, Notes on Book-plates, 1574-1800 (private, 1887); Friedrich Warnecke, Die deutschen Bücherzeichen (1890); Henri Bouchot, Les Ex-libris et les marques de possession du livre (1891); Egerton Castle, English Book-plates (1892); Walter Hamilton, French Book-plates (1892), Dated Book-plates (1895); H.W. Fincham, Artists and Engravers of British and American Book-plates (1897); German Book-plates, by Count K.E. zu Leiningen-Westerburg, translated by G.R. Denis (1901).

(E. Ca.)


BOOK-SCORPION, or False Scorpion, minute arachnids superficially resembling tailless scorpions and belonging to the order Pseudoscorpiones of the class Arachnida. Occurring in all temperate and tropical countries, book-scorpions live for the most part under stones, beneath the bark of trees or in vegetable detritus. A few species, however, like the common British forms Chelifer cancroides and Chiridium museorum, frequent human dwellings and are found in books, old chests, furniture, &c; others like Ganypus littoralis and allied species may be found under stones or pieces of coral between tide-marks; while others, which are for the most part blind, live permanently in dark caves. Their food consists of minute insects or mites. It is possibly for the purpose of feeding on parasitic mites that book-scorpions lodge themselves beneath the wing-cases of large tropical beetles; and the same explanation, in default of a better, may be extended to their well-known and oft-recorded habit of seizing hold of the legs of horse-flies or other two-winged insects. For safety during hibernation and moulting, book-scorpions spin a small spherical cocoon. They are oviparous; and the eggs after being laid are carried about by the mother, attached to the lower surface of her body, the young remaining with their parent until they have acquired their definite form and are able to shift for themselves.

(R. I. P.)


BOOKSELLING. The trade in books is of a very ancient date. The early poets and orators recited their effusions in public to induce their hearers to possess written copies of their poems or orations. Frequently they were taken down viva voce, and transcripts sold to such as were wealthy enough to purchase. In the book of Jeremiah the prophet is represented as dictating to Baruch the scribe, who, when questioned, described the mode in which his book was written. These scribes were, in fact, the earliest booksellers, and supplied copies as they were demanded. Aristotle, we are told, possessed a somewhat extensive library; and Plato is recorded to have paid the large sum of one hundred minae for three small treatises of Philolaus the Pythagorean. When the Alexandrian library was founded about 300 B.C., various expedients were resorted to for the purpose of procuring books, and this appears to have stimulated the energies of the Athenian booksellers, who were termed βιβλὶων κάπηλοι. In Rome, towards the end of the republic, it became the fashion to have a library as part of the household furniture; and the booksellers, librarii (Cic. D. Leg. iii. 20) or bibliopolae (Martial iv. 71, xiii. 3), carried on a flourishing trade. Their shops (taberna librarii, Cicero, Phil. ii. 9) were chiefly in the Argiletum, and in the Vicus Sandalarius. On the door, or on the side posts, was a list of the books on sale; and Martial (i. 118), who mentions this also, says that a copy of his First Book of Epigrams might be purchased for five denarii. In the time of Augustus the great booksellers were the Sosii. According to Justinian (ii. I. 33), a law was passed securing to the scribes the property in the materials used; and in this may, perhaps, be traced the first germ of the modern law of copyright.

The spread of Christianity naturally created a great demand for copies of the Gospels and other sacred books, and later on for missals and other devotional volumes for church and private use. Benedict Biscop, the founder of the abbey at Wearmouth in England, brought home with him from France (671) a whole cargo of books, part of which he had “bought,” but from whom is not mentioned. Passing by the intermediate ages we find that previous to the Reformation, the text writers or stationers (stacyoneres), who sold copies of the books then in use—the ABC, the Paternoster, Creed, Ave Maria and other MS. copies of prayers, in the neighbourhood of St Paul’s, London,—were, in 1403, formed into a gild. Some of these “stacyoneres” had stalls or stations built against the very walls of the cathedral itself, in the same manner as they are still to be found in some of the older continental cities. In Henry Anstey’s Munimenta Academica, published under the direction of the master of the rolls, we catch a glimpse of the “sworn” university bookseller or stationer, John More of Oxford, who apparently first supplied pupils with their books, and then acted the part of a pawnbroker. Anstey says (p. 77), “The fact is that they (the students) mostly could not afford to buy books, and had they been able, would not have found the advantage so considerable as might be supposed, the instruction given being almost wholly oral. The chief source of supplying books was by purchase from the university sworn stationers, who had to a great extent a monopoly. Of such books there were plainly very large numbers constantly changing hands.” Besides the sworn stationers there were many booksellers in Oxford who were not sworn; for one of the statutes, passed in the year 1373, expressly recites that, in consequence of their presence, “books of great value are sold and carried away from Oxford, the owners of them are cheated, and the sworn stationers are deprived of their lawful business.” It was, therefore, enacted that no bookseller except two sworn stationers or their deputies, should sell any book being either his own property or that of another, exceeding half a mark in value, under a pain of imprisonment, or, if the offence was repeated, of abjuring his trade within the university.

“The trade in bookselling seems,” says Hallam, “to have been established at Paris and Bologna in the 12th century; the lawyers and universities called it into life. It is very improbable that it existed in what we properly call the dark ages. Peter of Blois mentions a book which he had bought of a public dealer (a quodam publico mangone librorum); but we do not find many distinct accounts of them till the next age. These dealers were denominated stationarii, perhaps from the open stalls at which they carried on their business, though statio is a general word for a shop in low Latin. They appear, by the old statutes of the university of Paris, and by those of Bologna, to have sold books upon commission, and are sometimes, though not uniformly, distinguished from the librarii, a word which, having originally been confined to the copyists of books, was afterwards applied to those who traded in them. They sold parchment and other materials of writing, which have retained the name of stationery, and they naturally exercised the kindred occupations of binding and decorating. They probably employed transcribers; we find at least that there was a profession of copyists in the universities and in large cities.”

The modern system of bookselling dates from soon after the introduction of printing. The earliest printers were also editors and booksellers; but being unable to sell every copy of the works they printed, they had agents at most of the seats of learning. Antony Koburger, who introduced the art of printing into Nuremberg in 1470, although a printer, was more of a bookseller; for, besides his own sixteen shops, we are informed by his biographers that he had agents for the sale of his books in every city of Christendom. Wynkyn de Worde, who succeeded to Caxton’s press in Westminster, had a shop in Fleet Street.

The religious dissensions of the continent, and the Reformation in England under Henry VIII. and Edward VI., created a great demand for books; but in England neither Tudor nor Stuart could tolerate a free press, and various efforts were made to curb it. The first patent for the office of king’s printer was granted to Thomas Berthelet by Henry VIII. in 1529, but only such books as were first licensed were to be printed. At that time even the purchase or possession of an unlicensed book was a punishable offence. In 1556 the Company of Stationers was incorporated, and very extensive powers were granted in order that obnoxious books might be repressed. In the following reigns the Star Chamber exercised a pretty effectual censorship; but, in spite of all precaution, such was the demand for books of a polemical nature, that many were printed abroad and surreptitiously introduced into England. Queen Elizabeth interfered but little with books except when they emanated from Roman Catholics, or touched upon her royal prerogatives; and towards the end of her reign, and during that of her pedantic successor, James, bookselling flourished. Archbishop Laud, who was no friend to booksellers, introduced many arbitrary restrictions; but they were all, or nearly all, removed during the time of the Commonwealth. So much had bookselling increased during the Protectorate that, in 1658, was published A Catalogue of the most Vendible Books in England, digested under the heads of Divinity, History, Physic, &c., with School Books, Hebrew, Greek and Latin, and an Introduction, for the use of Schools, by W. London. A bad time immediately followed. The Restoration also restored the office of Licenser of the Press, which continued till 1694.

In the first English Copyright Act (1709), which specially relates to booksellers, it is enacted that, if any person shall think the published price of a book unreasonably high, he may thereupon make complaint to the archbishop of Canterbury, and to certain other persons named, who shall thereupon examine into his complaint, and if well founded reduce the price; and any bookseller charging more than the price so fixed shall be fined £5 for every copy sold. Apparently this enactment remained a dead letter.

For later times it is necessary to make a gradual distinction between booksellers, whose trade consists in selling books, either by retail or wholesale, and publishers, whose business involves the production of the books from the author’s manuscripts, and who are the intermediaries between author and bookseller, just as the booksellers (in the restricted sense) are intermediaries between the author and publisher and the public. The article on Publishing (q.v.) deals more particularly with this second class, who, though originally booksellers, gradually took a higher rank in the book-trade, and whose influence upon the history of literature has often been very great. The convenience of this distinction is not impaired by the fact either that a publisher is also a wholesale bookseller, or that a still more recent development in publishing (as in the instance of the direct sale in 1902, by the London Times, of the supplementary volumes to the 9th edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, which were also “published” by The Times) started a reaction to some extent in the way of amalgamating the two functions. The scheme of The Times Book Club (started in 1905) was, again, a combination of a subscription library with the business of bookselling (see NEWSPAPERS); and it brought the organization of a newspaper, with all its means of achieving publicity, into the work of pushing the sale of books, in a way which practically introduced a new factor into the bookselling business.

During the 19th century it remains the fact that the distinction between publisher and bookseller—literary promoter and shopkeeper—became fundamental. The booksellers, as such, were engaged either in wholesale bookselling, or in the retail, the old or second-hand, and the periodical trades.

Coming between the publisher and the retail bookseller is the important distributing agency of the wholesale bookseller. It is to him that the retailer looks for his miscellaneous supplies, as it is simply impossible for him to stock one-half of the books published. In Paternoster Row, London, which has for over a hundred years been the centre of this industry, may be seen the collectors from the shops of the retail booksellers, busily engaged in obtaining the books ordered by the book-buying public. It is also through these agencies that the country bookseller obtains his miscellaneous supplies. At the leading house in this department of bookselling almost any book can be found, or information obtained concerning it. At one of these establishments over 1,000,000 books are constantly kept in stock. It is here that the publisher calls first on showing or “subscribing” a new book, a critical process, for by the number thus subscribed the fate of a book is sometimes determined.

What may be termed the third partner in publishing and its ramification is the retail bookseller; and to protect his interests there was established in 1890 a London booksellers’ society, which had for its object the restriction of discounts to 25%, and also to arrange prices generally and control all details connected with the trade. The society a few years afterwards widened its field of operations so as to include the whole of the United Kingdom, and its designation then became “The Associated Booksellers of Great Britain and Ireland.”

The trade in old or (as they are sometimes called) second-hand books is in a sense, no doubt, a higher class of business, requiring a knowledge of bibliography, while the transactions are with individual books rather than with numbers of copies. Occasionally dealers in this class of books replenish their stocks by purchasing remainders of books, which, having ceased from one cause or another to sell with the publisher, they offer to the public as bargains. The periodical trade grew up during the 19th century, and was in its infancy when the Penny Magazine, Chambers’s Journal, and similar publications first appeared. The growth of this important part of the business was greatly promoted by the abolition of the newspaper stamp and of the duty upon paper, the introduction of attractive illustrations, and the facilities offered for purchasing books by instalments.

The history of bookselling in America has a special interest. The Spanish settlements drew away from the old country much of its enterprise and best talent, and the presses of Mexico and other cities teemed with publications mostly of a religious character, but many others, especially linguistic and historical, were also published. Bookselling in the United States was of a somewhat later growth, although printing was introduced into Boston as early as 1676, Philadelphia in 1685, and New York in 1693. Franklin had served to make the trade illustrious, yet few persons were engaged in it at the commencement of the 19th century. Books chiefly for scholars and libraries were imported from Europe; but after the second war printing-presses multiplied rapidly, and with the spread of newspapers and education there also arose a demand for books, and publishers set to work to secure the advantages offered by the wide field of English literature, the whole of which they had the liberty of reaping free of all cost beyond that of production. The works of Scott, Byron, Moore, Southey, Wordsworth, and indeed of every author of note, were reprinted without the smallest payment to author or proprietor. Half the names of the authors in the so-called “American” catalogue of books printed between 1820 and 1852 are British. By this means the works of the best authors were brought to the doors of all classes in the cheapest variety of forms. In consequence of the Civil War, the high price of labour, and the restrictive duties laid on in order to protect native industry, coupled with the frequent intercourse with England, a great change took place, and American publishers and booksellers, while there was still no international copyright, made liberal offers for early sheets of new publications. Boston, New York and Philadelphia still retained their old supremacy as bookselling centres. Meanwhile, the distinct publishing business also grew, till gradually the conditions of business became assimilated to those of Europe.

In the course of the 16th and 17th centuries the Low Countries for a time became the chief centre of the bookselling world, and many of the finest folios and quartos in our libraries bear the names of Jansen, Blauw or Plantin, with the imprint of Amsterdam, Utrecht, Leiden or Antwerp, while the Elzevirs besides other works produced their charming little pocket classics. The southern towns of Douai and St Omer at the same time furnished polemical works in English.

Under Publishing are noticed various further developments of this subject. Much interesting information on the history of the book trade will be found in Charles Knight’s Biography of William Caxton, and in the same author’s Shadows of the Old Booksellers (1865). See also Henry Curwen, History of Booksellers (1873); and Heinrich Lempertz, Bilder-Hefte zur Geschichte des Bücherhandels (Cologne, 1854).


BOOLE, GEORGE (1815-1864), English logician and mathematician, was born in Lincoln on the 2nd of November 1815. His father was a tradesman of limited means, but of studious character and active mind. Being especially interested in mathematical science, the father gave his son his first lessons; but the extraordinary mathematical powers of George Boole did not manifest themselves in early life. At first his favourite subject was classics. Not until the age of seventeen did he attack the higher mathematics, and his progress was much retarded by the want of efficient help. When about sixteen years of age he became assistant-master in a private school at Doncaster, and he maintained himself to the end of his life in one grade or other of the scholastic profession. Few distinguished men, indeed, have had a less eventful life. Almost the only changes which can be called events are his successful establishment of a school at Lincoln, its removal to Waddington, his appointment in 1849 as professor of mathematics in the Queen’s College at Cork, and his marriage in 1855 to Miss Mary Everest, who, as Mrs Boole, afterwards wrote several useful educational works on her husband’s principles.

To the public Boole was known only as the author of numerous abstruse papers on mathematical topics, and of three or four distinct publications which have become standard works. His earliest published paper was one upon the “Theory of Analytical Transformations,” printed in the Cambridge Mathematical Journal for 1839, and it led to a friendship between Boole and D.F. Gregory, the editor of the journal, which lasted until the premature death of the latter in 1844. A long list of Boole’s memoirs and detached papers, both on logical and mathematical topics, will be found in the Catalogue of Scientific Memoirs published by the Royal Society, and in the supplementary volume on Differential Equations, edited by Isaac Todhunter. To the Cambridge Mathematical Journal and its successor, the Cambridge and Dublin Mathematical Journal, Boole contributed in all twenty-two articles. In the third and fourth series of the Philosophical Magazine will be found sixteen papers. The Royal Society printed six important memoirs in the Philosophical Transactions, and a few other memoirs are to be found in the Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh and of the Royal Irish Academy, in the Bulletin de l’Académie de St-Pétersbourg for 1862 (under the name G. Boldt, vol. iv. pp. 198-215), and in Crelle’s Journal. To these lists should be added a paper on the mathematical basis of logic, published in the Mechanic’s Magazine for 1848. The works of Boole are thus contained in about fifty scattered articles and a few separate publications.

Only two systematic treatises on mathematical subjects were completed by Boole during his lifetime. The well-known Treatise on Differential Equations appeared in 1859, and was followed, the next year, by a Treatise on the Calculus of Finite Differences, designed to serve as a sequel to the former work. These treatises are valuable contributions to the important branches of mathematics in question, and Boole, in composing them, seems to have combined elementary exposition with the profound investigation of the philosophy of the subject in a manner hardly admitting of improvement. To a certain extent these works embody the more important discoveries of their author. In the 16th and 17th chapters of the Differential Equations we find, for instance, a lucid account of the general symbolic method, the bold and skilful employment of which led to Boole’s chief discoveries, and of a general method in analysis, originally described in his famous memoir printed in the Philosophical Transactions for 1844. Boole was one of the most eminent of those who perceived that the symbols of operation could be separated from those of quantity and treated as distinct objects of calculation. His principal characteristic was perfect confidence in any result obtained by the treatment of symbols in accordance with their primary laws and conditions, and an almost unrivalled skill and power in tracing out these results.

During the last few years of his life Boole was constantly engaged in extending his researches with the object of producing a second edition of his Differential Equations much more complete than the first edition; and part of his last vacation was spent in the libraries of the Royal Society and the British Museum. But this new edition was never completed. Even the manuscripts left at his death were so incomplete that Todhunter, into whose hands they were put, found it impossible to use them in the publication of a second edition of the original treatise, and wisely printed them, in 1865, in a supplementary volume.

With the exception of Augustus de Morgan, Boole was probably the first English mathematician since the time of John Wallis who had also written upon logic. His novel views of logical method were due to the same profound confidence in symbolic reasoning to which he had successfully trusted in mathematical investigation. Speculations concerning a calculus of reasoning had at different times occupied Boole’s thoughts, but it was not till the spring of 1847 that he put his ideas into the pamphlet called Mathematical Analysis of Logic. Boole afterwards regarded this as a hasty and imperfect exposition of his logical system, and he desired that his much larger work, An Investigation of the Laws of Thought, on which are founded the Mathematical Theories of Logic and Probabilities (1854), should alone be considered as containing a mature statement of his views. Nevertheless, there is a charm of originality about his earlier logical work which no competent reader can fail to appreciate. He did not regard logic as a branch of mathematics, as the title of his earlier pamphlet might be taken to imply, but he pointed out such a deep analogy between the symbols of algebra and those which can be made, in his opinion, to represent logical forms and syllogisms, that we can hardly help saying that logic is mathematics restricted to the two quantities, 0 and 1. By unity Boole denoted the universe of thinkable objects; literal symbols, such as x, y, z, v, u, &c., were used with the elective meaning attaching to common adjectives and substantives. Thus, if x = horned and y = sheep, then the successive acts of election represented by x and y, if performed on unity, give the whole of the class horned sheep. Boole showed that elective symbols of this kind obey the same primary laws of combination as algebraical symbols, whence it followed that they could be added, subtracted, multiplied and even divided, almost exactly in the same manner as numbers. Thus, 1 − x would represent the operation of selecting all things in the world except horned things, that is, all not horned things, and (1 − x)(1 − y) would give us all things neither horned nor sheep. By the use of such symbols propositions could be reduced to the form of equations, and the syllogistic conclusion from two premises was obtained by eliminating the middle term according to ordinary algebraic rules.

Still more original and remarkable, however, was that part of his system, fully stated in his Laws of Thought, which formed a general symbolic method of logical inference. Given any propositions involving any number of terms, Boole showed how, by the purely symbolic treatment of the premises, to draw any conclusion logically contained in those premises. The second part of the Laws of Thought contained a corresponding attempt to discover a general method in probabilities, which should enable us from the given probabilities of any system of events to determine the consequent probability of any other event logically connected with the given events.

Though Boole published little except his mathematical and logical works, his acquaintance with general literature was wide and deep. Dante was his favourite poet, and he preferred the Paradiso to the Inferno. The metaphysics of Aristotle, the ethics of Spinoza, the philosophical works of Cicero, and many kindred works, were also frequent subjects of study. His reflections upon scientific, philosophical and religious questions are contained in four addresses upon The Genius of Sir Isaac Newton, The Right Use of Leisure, The Claims of Science and The Social Aspect of Intellectual Culture, which he delivered and printed at different times.

The personal character of Boole inspired all his friends with the deepest esteem. He was marked by the modesty of true genius, and his life was given to the single-minded pursuit of truth. Though he received a medal from the Royal Society for his memoir of 1844, and the honorary degree of LL.D. from the university of Dublin, he neither sought nor received the ordinary rewards to which his discoveries would entitle him. On the 8th of December 1864, in the full vigour of his intellectual powers, he died of an attack of fever, ending in suffusion on the lungs.

An excellent sketch of his life and works, by the Rev. R. Harley, F.R.S., is to be found in the British Quarterly Review for July 1866, No. 87.

(W. S. J.)


BOOM, a word of Teutonic origin (cf. the Ger. Baum, tree, and the Eng. beam) for a pole, bar or barrier, used especially as a nautical term, for a long spar, used to extend a sail at the foot (main-boom, jib-boom, &c.). The “boom” of a cannon (note of a bell, cry of the bittern) is distinct from this, being onomatopoeic. In the sense of a barrier, a boom is generally formed of timber lashed together, or of chains, built across the mouth of a river or harbour as a means of defence. Possibly from the metaphor of a breaking boom, and the accompanying rush and roar, or from the rush of rising waters (mingled with the onomatopoeic use), “boom” began in America to be used of a sudden “spurt” or access of industrial activity, as in the phrase “a boom in cotton.” Hence the verb “to boom,” meaning to advertise or push into public favour.


BOOMERANG, a missile weapon of the Australian aborigines and other peoples. The word is taken from the native name used by a single tribe in New South Wales, and was mentioned in 1827 by Captain King as “the Port Jackson term” (Nav. Surv. Coasts Austral. i. 355) It has been erroneously connected with the womera or spear-thrower, and equally erroneously regarded as onomatopoeic—for it does not “boom” but whistles in the air. Two main types may be distinguished: (a) the return boomerang; (b) the non-return or war boomerang. Both types are found in most parts of Australia; the return form was, according to General Pitt-Rivers, used in ancient Egypt; and a weapon which has a close resemblance to the boomerang survives to the present day in North-East Africa, whence it has spread in allied forms made of metal (throwing knives). Among the Dravidians of South India is found a boomerang-shaped instrument which can be made to return. It is, however, still uncertain whether the so-called boomerangs of Egypt and India have any real resemblance to the Australian return boomerang. The Hopis (Moquis) of Arizona use a non-return form. The general form of both weapons is the same. They are sickle-shaped, and made of wood (in India of ivory or steel), so modelled that the thickness is about 1⁄6th of the breadth, which again is 1⁄12th of the length, the last varying from 6 in. to 3 or 4 ft. The return boomerang, which may have two straight arms at an angle of from 70° to 120°, but in Australia is always curved at an angle of 90° or more, is usually 2 to 3 ft. in length and weighs some 8 oz.; the arms have a skew, being twisted 2° or 3° from the plane running through the centre of the weapon, so that B and D (fig. 1) are above it, A and E below it; the ends AB and DE are also to some extent raised above the plane of the weapon at C; the cross section is asymmetrical, the upper side in the figure being convex, the lower flat or nearly so; this must be thrown with the right hand. The non-return boomerang has a skew in the opposite direction but is otherwise similar.

The peculiarity of the boomerang’s flight depends mainly on its skew. The return boomerang is held vertically, the concave side forward, and thrown in a plane parallel to the surface of the ground, as much rotation as possible being imparted to it. It travels straight for 30 yds. or more, with nearly vertical rotation; then it inclines to the left, lying over on the flat side and rising in the air; after describing a circle of 50 or more yards in diameter it returns to the thrower. Some observers state that it returns after striking the object; it is certainly possible to strike the ground without affecting the return. Throws of 100 yds. or more, before the leftward curve begins, can be accomplished by Australian natives, the weapon rising as much as 150 ft. in the air and circling five times before returning. The non-return type may also be made to return in a nearly straight line by throwing it at an angle of 45°, but normally it is thrown like the return type, and will then travel an immense distance. No accurate measurements of Australian throws are available, but an English throw of 180 yds. has been recorded, compared with the same thrower’s 70 yds. with the cricket ball.

The war boomerang in an expert’s hand is a deadly weapon, and the lighter hunting boomerang is also effective. The return boomerang is chiefly used as a plaything or for killing birds, and is often as dangerous to the thrower as to the object at which it is aimed.

See Pitt-Rivers (Lane Fox) in Anthropological and Archaeological Fragments, “Primitive Warfare”; also in Journ. Royal United Service Inst. xii. No. 51; British Ass. Report (1872); Catalogue of Bethnal Green Collection, p. 28; Buchner in Globus, lxxxviii. 39, 63; G.T. Walker in Phil. Trans. cxc. 23; Wide World Mag. ii. 626; Nature, xiv. 248, lxiv. 338; Brough Smyth, Aborigines of Victoria, i. 310-329; Roth, Ethnological Studies.

(N. W. T.)


BOONE, DANIEL (1734-1820), American pioneer and backwoodsman, of English descent, was born near the present city of Reading, Pennsylvania, on the 2nd of November (N.S.) 1734. About 1751 his father, Squire Boone, with his family settled in the Yadkin Valley in what is now Davie county, North Carolina, then on the frontier. Daniel worked on his father’s farm, and spent much of his time hunting and trapping. In 1755 he served as a wagoner and blacksmith in Braddock’s disastrous expedition against the Indians. In 1765 he visited Florida, and in 1767 he first visited the Kentucky region. With several companions, including John Finley, who had been there as early as 1752, he spent two years, 1769-1771, roaming about what is now Kentucky, meeting with numberless adventures, coming in conflict with roving bands of Indians, and collecting bear, beaver and deer skins. He served in Lord Dunmore’s War (1774), and in 1775 led to Kentucky the party of settlers who founded Boonesborough, long an important settlement. On the 7th of February 1778 he, and the party he led, were captured by a band of Shawnees. He was adopted into the Shawnee tribe, was taken to Detroit, and on the return from that place escaped, reaching Boonesborough, after a perilous journey of 160 m., within four days, in time to give warning of a formidable attack by his captors. In repelling this attack, which lasted from the 8th to the 17th of September, he bore a conspicuous part. He also took part in the sanguinary “Battle of Blue Licks” in 1782. For a time he represented the settlers in the Virginia legislature (Kentucky then being a part of Virginia), and he also served as deputy surveyor, sheriff and county lieutenant of Fayette county, one of the three counties into which Kentucky was then divided. Having lost all his land through his carelessness in regard to titles, he removed in 1788 to Point Pleasant, Virginia (now W. Va.), whence about 1799 he removed to a place in what is now Missouri, about 45 m. west of St Louis, in territory then owned by Spain. He received a grant of 1000 arpents (about 845 acres) of land, and was appointed syndic of the district. After the United States gained possession of “Louisiana” in 1803, Boone’s title was found to be defective, and he was again dispossessed. He died on the 22nd of September 1820, and in 1845 his remains were removed to Frankfort, Kentucky, where a monument has been erected to his memory. Boone was a typical American pioneer and backwoodsman, a great hunter and trapper, highly skilled in all the arts of woodcraft, familiar with the Indians and their methods of warfare, a famous Indian fighter, restless, resourceful and fearless. His services, however, have been greatly over-estimated, and he was not, as is popularly believed, either the first to explore or the first to settle the Kentucky region.

The best biography is that by Reuben G. Thwaites, Daniel Boone (New York, 1902).


BOONE, a city and the county-seat of Boone county, Iowa, U.S.A., a short distance from the Des Moines river and near the centre of the state. Pop. (1890) 6520; (1900) 8880; (1905, state census) 9500 (1334 foreign-born); (1910) 10,347. It is served by the Chicago & North-Western (which has construction and repair shops here), the Chicago, Milwaukee & St Paul railways, and by the Fort Dodge, Des Moines & Southern (inter-urban) railway, which connects with Des Moines, Ames, &c. Boone is an important coal centre; bricks and tiles are manufactured from the clay obtained near by; there is a packing plant for the manufacture of beef and pork products; and from the rich farming section by which the city is surrounded come large quantities of grain, some of which is milled here, and live-stock. Boone was laid out in 1865, was incorporated as a town in 1866, and was chartered as a city in 1868.


BOONVILLE, a city and the county-seat of Cooper county, Missouri, U.S.A., on the right bank of the Missouri river, about 210 m. W. by N. of St Louis. Pop. (1890) 4141; (1900) 4377, including 1111 negroes; (1910) 4252. It is served by the Missouri Pacific, and the Missouri, Kansas & Texas railways. The city lies along a bluff about 100 ft. above the river. It is the seat of the Missouri training school for boys (1889), and of the Kemper military school (1844). Among its manufactures are earthenware, tobacco, vinegar, flour, farm-gates (iron), sash and doors, marble and granite monuments, carriages and bricks. Iron, zinc and lead are found in the vicinity, and some coal is mined. Boonville, named in honour of Daniel Boone, was settled in 1810, was laid out in 1817, incorporated as a village in 1839, and chartered as a city of the third class in 1896. Here on the 17th of June 1861, Captain (Major-General) Nathaniel Lyon, commanding about 2000 Union troops, defeated a slightly larger, but undisciplined Confederate force under Brigadier-General John S. Marmaduke. David Barton (d. 1837), one of the first two United States senators from Missouri, was buried here.


BOORDE (or Borde), ANDREW (1490?-1549), English physician and author, was born at Boord’s Hill, Holms Dale, Sussex. He was educated at Oxford, and was admitted a member of the Carthusian order while under age. In 1521 he was “dispensed from religion” in order that he might act as suffragan bishop of Chichester, though he never actually filled the office, and in 1529 he was freed from his monastic vows, not being able to endure, as he said, the “rugorosite off your relygyon.” He then went abroad to study medicine, and on his return was summoned to attend the duke of Norfolk. He subsequently visited the universities of Orleans, Poitiers, Toulouse, Montpellier and Wittenberg, saw the practice of surgery at Rome, and went on pilgrimage with others of his nation to Compostella in Navarre. In 1534 Boorde was again in London at the Charterhouse, and in 1536 wrote to Thomas Cromwell, complaining that he was in “thraldom” there. Cromwell set him at liberty, and after entertaining him at his house at Bishops Waltham in Hampshire, seems to have entrusted him with a mission to find out the state of public feeling abroad with regard to the English king. He writes to Cromwell from various places, and from Catalonia he sends him the seeds of rhubarb, two hundred years before that plant was generally cultivated in England. Two letters in 1535 and 1536 to the prior of the Charterhouse anxiously argue for his complete release from monastic vows. In 1536 he was studying medicine at Glasgow and gathering his observations about the Scots and the “devellyshe dysposicion of a Scottysh man, not to love nor favour an Englishe man.” About 1538 Boorde set out on his most extensive journey, visiting nearly all the countries of Europe except Russia and Turkey, and making his way to Jerusalem. Of these travels he wrote a full itinerary, lost unfortunately by Cromwell, to whom it was sent. He finally settled at Montpellier and before 1542 had completed his Fyrst Boke of the Introduction of Knowledge, which ranks as the earliest continental guide book, his Dietary and his Brevyary. He probably returned to England in 1542, and lived at Winchester and perhaps at Pevensey. John Ponet, bishop of Winchester, in an Apology against Bishop Gardiner, relates as matter of common knowledge that in 1547 Doctor Boord, a physician and a holy man, who still kept the Carthusian rules of fasting and wearing a hair shirt, was convicted in Winchester of keeping in his house three loose women. For this offence, apparently, he was imprisoned in the Fleet, where he made his will on the 9th of April 1549. It was proved on the 25th of the same month. Thomas Hearne (Benedictus Abbas, i, p. 52) says that he went round like a quack doctor to country fairs, and therefore rashly supposed him to have been the original merry-andrew.

Andrew Boorde was no doubt a learned physician, and he has left two amusing and often sensible works on domestic hygiene and medicine, but his most entertaining book is The Fyrst Boke of the Introduction of Knowledge. The whyche dothe teache a man to speake parte of all maner of languages, and to know the usage and fashion of all maner of countreys. And for to know the moste parte of all maner of coynes of money, the whych is currant in every region. Made by Andrew Borde, of Physycke Doctor. Dedycated to the right honourable, and gracious lady Mary daughter of our soverayne Lorde Kyng Henry the eyght (c. 1547). The Englishman describes himself and his foibles—his fickleness, his fondness for new fashions and his obstinacy—in lively verse. Then follows a geographical description of the country, followed by a model dialogue in the Cornish language. Each country in turn is dealt with on similar lines. His other authentic works are: Here foloweth a Compendyous Regimente or Dyetary of health, made in Mountpyllor (Thomas Colwell, 1562), of which there are undated and doubtless earlier editions; The Brevyary of Health (1547?); The Princyples of Astronamy (1547?); “The Peregrination of Doctor Board,” printed by Thomas Hearne in Benedictus Abbas Petroburgensis, vol. ii. (1735); A Pronostycacyon or an Almanacke for the yere of our lorde MCCCCCXLV. made by Andrew Boorde. His Itinerary of Europe and Treatyse upon Berdes are lost. Several jest-books are attributed to him without authority—The Merie Tales of the Mad Men of Gotam (earliest extant edition, 1630), Scogin’s Jests (1626), A mery jest of the Mylner of Abyngton, with his wyfe, and his daughter, and of two poore scholers of Cambridge (printed by Wynkyn de Worde), and a Latin poem, Nos Vagabunduli.

See Dr F.J. Furnivall’s reprint of the Introduction and some other selections for the Early English Text Society (new series, 1870).


BOOS, MARTIN (1762-1825), German Roman Catholic theologian, was born at Huttenried in Bavaria on the 25th of December 1762. Orphaned at the age of four, he was reared by an uncle at Augsburg, who finally sent him to the university of Dillingen. There he laid the foundation of the modest piety by which his whole life was distinguished. After serving as priest in several Bavarian towns, he made his way in 1799 to Linz in Austria, where he was welcomed by Bishop Gall, and set to work first at Leonding and then at Waldneukirchen, becoming in 1806 pastor at Gallneukirchen. His pietistic movement won considerable way among the Catholic laity, and even attracted some fifty or sixty priests. The death of Gall and other powerful friends, however, exposed him to bitter enmity and persecution from about 1812, and he had to answer endless accusations in the consistorial courts. His enemies followed him when he returned to Bavaria, but in 1817 the Prussian government appointed him to a professorship at Düsseldorf, and in 1819 gave him the pastorate at Sayn near Neuwied. He died on the 29th of August 1825.

See Life by J. Gossner (1831).


BOOT, (1) (From the O. Eng. bót, a word common to Teutonic languages, e.g. Goth, bóta, “good, advantage,” O.H.G. Buoza, Mod. Ger. Busse, “penance, fine”; cf. “better,” the comparative of “good”), profit or advantage. The word survives in “bootless,” i.e. useless or unavailing, and in such expressions, chiefly archaistic, as “what boots it?” “Bote,” an old form, survives in some old compound legal words, such as “house-bote,” “fire-bote,” “hedge-bote,” &c., for particular rights of “estover,” the Norman French word corresponding to the Saxon “bote” (see Estovers and Commons). The same form survives also in such expressions as “thief-bote” for the Old English customary compensation paid for injuries.

(2) (A word of uncertain origin, which came into English through the O. Fr. bote, modern botte; Med. Lat. botta or bota), a covering for the foot. Properly a boot covers the whole lower part of the leg, sometimes reaching to or above the knee, but in common usage it is applied to one which reaches only above the ankle, and is thus distinguished from “shoe” (see Costume and Shoe).

The “boot” of a coach has the same derivation. It was originally applied to the fixed outside step, the French botte, then to the uncovered spaces on or beside the step on which the attendants sat facing sideways. Both senses are now obsolete, the term now being applied to the covered receptacles under the seats of the guard and coachman.

The Boot, Boots or Bootikin was an instrument of torture formerly in use to extort confessions from suspected persons, or obtain evidence from unwilling witnesses. It originated in Scotland, but the date of its first use is unknown. It was certainly frequently employed there in the latter years of the 16th century. In a case of forgery in 1579 two witnesses, a clergyman and an attorney, were so tortured. In a letter dated 1583 at the Record Office in London, Walsingham instructs the English ambassador at Edinburgh to have Father Holt, an English Jesuit, “put to the boots.” It seems to have fallen into disuse after 1630, but was revived in 1666 on the occasion of the Covenanters’ rebellion, and was employed during the reigns of Charles II. and James II. Upon the accession of William III. the Scottish convention denounced “the use of torture, without evidence and in ordinary crimes, as contrary to law.” However, a year or so later, one Neville Payne, an Englishman suspected of treasonable motives for visiting Scotland, was put to the torture under the authority of a warrant signed by the king. This is the last recorded case of its use, torture being finally abolished in Scotland in 1709. It was not used in England after 1640. The boot was made of iron or wood and iron fastened on the leg, between which and the boot wedges were driven by blows from a mallet. After each blow a question was put to the victim, and the ordeal was continued until he gave the information or fainted. The wedges were usually placed against the calf of the leg, but Bishop Burnet says that they were sometimes put against the shin-bone. A similar instrument, called “Spanish boots,” was used in Germany. There were also iron boots which were heated on the victim’s foot. A less cruel form was a boot or buskin made wet and drawn upon the legs and then dried with fire.


BOÖTES (Gr. βοώτης, a ploughman, from βοῦς, an ox), a constellation of the northern hemisphere, mentioned by Eudoxus (4th century B.C.) and Aratus (3rd century B.C.), and perhaps alluded to in the book of Job (see Arcturus), and by Homer and Hesiod. The ancient Greeks symbolized it as a man walking, with his right hand grasping a club, and his left extending upwards and holding the leash of two dogs, which are apparently barking at the Great Bear. Ptolemy catalogues twenty-three stars, Tycho Brahe twenty-eight, Hevelius fifty-two. In addition to Arcturus, the brightest in the group, the most interesting stars of this constellation are: ε Boötis, a beautiful double star composed of a yellow star of magnitude 3, and a blue star of magnitude 6½; ξ Boötis, a double star composed of a yellow star, magnitude 4½, and a purple star, magnitude 6½; and W. Boötis, an irregularly variable star. This constellation has been known by many other names—Arcas, Arctophylax, Arcturus minor, Bubuleus, Bubulus, Canis latrans, Clamator, Icarus, Lycaon, Philometus, Plaustri custos, Plorans, Thegnis, Vociferator; the Arabs termed it Aramech or Archamech; Hesychius named it Orion; Jules Schiller, St Sylvester; Schickard, Nimrod; and Weigelius, the Three Swedish Crowns.


BOOTH, BARTON (1681-1733), English actor, who came of a good Lancashire family, was educated at Westminster school, where his success in the Latin play Andria gave him an inclination for the stage. He was intended for the church; but in 1698 he ran away from Trinity College, Cambridge, and obtained employment in a theatrical company in Dublin, where he made his first appearance as Oroonoko. After two seasons in Ireland he returned to London, where Betterton, who on an earlier application had withheld his active aid, probably out of regard for Booth’s family, now gave him all the assistance in his power. At Lincoln’s Inn Fields (1700-1704) he first appeared as Maximus in Valentinian, and his success was immediate. He was at the Haymarket with Betterton from 1705 to 1708, and for the next twenty years at Drury Lane. Booth died on the 10th of May 1733, and was buried in Westminster Abbey. His greatest parts, after the title-part of Addison’s Cato, which established his reputation as a tragedian, were probably Hotspur and Brutus. His Lear was deemed worthy of comparison with Garrick’s. As the ghost in Hamlet he is said never to have had a superior. Among his other Shakespearian rôles were Mark Antony, Timon of Athens and Othello. He also played to perfection the gay Lothario in Rowe’s Fair Penitent. Booth was twice married; his second wife, Hester Santlow, an actress of some merit, survived him.

See Cibber, Lives and Characters of the most eminent Actors and Actresses (1753); Victor, Memoirs of the Life of Barton Booth (1733).


BOOTH, CHARLES (1840- ), English sociologist, was born at Liverpool on the 30th of March 1840. In 1862 he became a partner in Alfred Booth & Company, a Liverpool firm engaged in the Brazil trade, and subsequently chairman of the Booth Steamship Company. He devoted much time, and no inconsiderable sums of money, to inquiries into the statistical aspects of social questions. The results of these are chiefly embodied in a work entitled Life and Labour of the People in London (1891-1903), of which the earlier portion appeared under the title of Life and Labour in 1889. The book is designed to show “the numerical relation which poverty, misery and depravity bear to regular earnings and comparative comfort, and to describe the general conditions under which each class lives.” It contains a most striking series of maps, in which the varying degrees of poverty are represented street by street, by shades of colour. The data for the work were derived in part from the detailed records kept by school-board “visitors,” partly from systematic inquiries directed by Mr Booth himself, supplemented by information derived from relieving officers and the Charity Organization Society. Mr Booth also paid much attention to a kindred subject—the lot of the aged poor. In 1894 he published a volume of statistics on the subject, and, in 1891 and 1899, works on Old-age pensions, his scheme for the latter depending on a general provision of pensions of five shillings a week to all aged persons, irrespective of the cost to the state. He married, in 1871, the daughter of Charles Zachary Macaulay. In 1904 he was made a privy councillor.


BOOTH, EDWIN [THOMAS] (1833-1893), American actor, was the second son of the actor Junius Brutus Booth, and was born in Belair, Maryland, on the 13th of November 1833. His father (1796-1852) was born in London on the 1st of May 1796, and, after trying printing, law, painting and the sea, made his first appearance on the stage in 1813, and appeared in London at Covent Garden in 1815. He became almost at once a great favourite, and a rival of Kean, whom he was thought to resemble. To Kean’s Othello nevertheless he played Iago on several occasions. Richard III., Hamlet, King Lear, Shylock and Sir Giles Overreach were his best parts, and in America, whither he removed in 1821, they brought him great popularity. His eccentricities sometimes bordered on insanity, and his excited and furious fencing as Richard III. and as Hamlet frequently compelled the Richmond and Laertes to fight for their lives in deadly earnest.

Edwin Booth’s first regular appearance was at the Boston Museum on the 10th of September 1849, as Tressel to his father’s Richard, in Colley Cibber’s version of Richard III. He was lithe and graceful in figure, buoyant in spirits; his dark hair fell in waving curls across his brow, and his eyes were soft, luminous and most expressive. His father watched him with great interest, but with evident disappointment, and the members of the theatrical profession, who held the acting of the elder Booth in great reverence, seemed to agree that the genius of the father had not descended to the son. Edwin Booth’s first appearance in New York was in the character of Wilford in The Iron Chest, which he played at the National theatre in Chatham Street, on the 27th of September 1850. A year later, on the illness of the father, the son took his place in the character of Richard III. It was not until after his parent’s death that the son conquered for himself an unassailable position on the stage. Between 1852 and 1856 he played in California, Australia and the Sandwich Islands, and those who had known him in the east were surprised when the news came that he had captivated his audiences with his brilliant acting. From this time forward his dramatic triumphs were warmly acknowledged. His Hamlet, Richard and Richelieu were pronounced to be superior to the performances of Edwin Forrest; his success as Sir Giles Overreach in A New Way to Pay Old Debts surpassed his father’s. In 1862 he became manager of the Winter Garden theatre, New York, where he gave a series of Shakespearian productions of then unexampled magnificence (1864-1867), including Hamlet, Othello and The Merchant of Venice. The splendour of this period in his career was dashed for many months when in 1865 his brother, John Wilkes Booth, assassinated President Lincoln (see Lincoln, Abraham). The three Booth brothers, Junius Brutus (1821-1853), Edwin and John Wilkes (1839-1865), had played together in Julius Caesar in the autumn of the previous year—the performance being memorable both for its own excellence, and for the tragic situation into which two of the principal performers were subsequently hurled by the crime of the third. Edwin Booth did not reappear on the stage until the 3rd of January 1866, when he played Hamlet at the Winter Garden theatre, the audience showing by unstinted applause their conviction that the glory of the one brother would never be imperilled by the infamy of the other.

In 1868-1869 Edwin Booth built a theatre of his own—Booth’s theatre, at the corner of 23rd Street and 6th Avenue, New York—and organized an excellent stock company, which produced Romeo and Juliet, The Winter’s Tale, Julius Caesar, Macbeth, Much Ado about Nothing, The Merchant of Venice and other plays. In all cases Booth used the true text of Shakespeare, thus antedating by many years a similar reform in England. Almost invariably his ventures were successful, but he was of a generous and confiding nature, and his management was not economical. In 1874 the grand dramatic structure he had raised was taken from him, and with it went his entire fortune. By arduous toil, however, he again accumulated wealth, in the use of which his generous nature was shown. He converted his spacious residence in Gramercy Park, New York, into a club—The Players’—for the elect of his profession, and for such members of other professions as they might choose. The house, with all his books and works of art, and many invaluable mementos of the stage, became the property of the club. A single apartment he kept for himself. In this he died on the 7th of June 1893. Among his parts were Macbeth, Lear, Othello, Iago, Shylock, Wolsey, Richard II., Richard III., Benedick, Petruccio, Richelieu, Sir Giles Overreach, Brutus (Payne’s), Bertuccio (in Tom Taylor’s The Fool’s Revenge), Ruy Blas, Don Cesar de Bazan, and many more. His most famous part was Hamlet, for which his extraordinary grace and beauty and his eloquent sensibility peculiarly fitted him. He probably played the part oftener than any other actor before or since. He visited London in 1851, and again in 1880 and in 1882, playing at the Haymarket theatre with brilliant success. In the last year he also visited Germany, where his acting was received with the highest enthusiasm. His last appearance was in Brooklyn as Hamlet in 1891. Booth was twice married: in 1860 to Mary Devlin (d. 1863), and in 1869 to Mary F. McVicker (d. 1881). He left by his first wife one daughter, Edwina Booth Grossman, who published Edwin Booth: Recollections (New York, 1894).

Edwin Booth’s prompt-books were edited by William Winter (1878). In a series of volumes, Actors and Actresses of Great Britain and America, edited by Lawrence Hutton and Brander Matthews, Edwin Booth contributed recollections of his father, which contain much valuable autobiographic material. For the same series Lawrence Barrett contributed an article on Edwin Booth. See also William Winter, Life and Art of Edwin Booth (1893); Lawrence Hutton, Edwin Booth (1893); Henry A. Clapp, Reminiscences of a Dramatic Critic (Boston, 1902); A.B. Clarke. The Elder and the Younger Booth (Boston, 1882).

(J. J.*)


BOOTH, WILLIAM (1829- ), founder and “general” of the Salvation Army (q.v.), was born at Nottingham on the 10th of April 1829. At the age of fifteen his mind took a strongly religious turn, under the influence of the Wesleyan Methodists, in which body he became a local preacher. In 1849 he came to London, where, according to his own account, his passion for open-air preaching caused his severance from the Wesleyans. Joining the Methodist New Connexion, he was ordained a minister, but, not being employed as he wished in active “travelling evangelization,” left that body also in 1861. Meanwhile he had (1855) married Miss Catherine Mumford, and had a family of four children. Both he and his wife occupied themselves with preaching, first in Cornwall and then in Cardiff and Walsall. At the last-named place was first organized a “Hallelujah band” of converted criminals and others, who testified in public of their conversion. In 1864 Booth went to London and continued his services in tents and in the open air, and founded a body which was successively known as the East London Revival Society, the East London Christian Mission, the Christian Mission and (in 1878) the Salvation Army. The Army operates (1) by outdoor meetings and processions; (2) by visiting public-houses, prisons, private houses; (3) by holding meetings in theatres, factories and other unusual buildings; (4) by using the most popular song-tunes and the language of everyday life, &c.; (5) by making every convert a daily witness for Christ, both in public and private. The army is a quasi-military organization, and Booth modelled its “Orders and Regulations” on those of the British army. Its early “campaigns” excited violent opposition, a “Skeleton Army” being organized to break up the meetings, and for many years Booth’s followers were subjected to fine and imprisonment as breakers of the peace. Since 1889, however, these disorders have been little heard of. The operations of the army were extended in 1880 to the United States, in 1881 to Australia, and spread to the European continent, to India, Ceylon and elsewhere, “General” Booth himself being an indefatigable traveller, organizer and speaker. His wife (b. 1829) died in 1890. By her preaching at Gateshead, where her husband was circuit minister, in 1860, she began the women’s ministry which is so prominent a feature of the army’s work. A biography of her by Mr Booth Tucker appeared in 1892.

In 1890 “General” Booth attracted further public attention by the publication of a work entitled In Darkest England, and the Way Out, in which he proposed to remedy pauperism and vice by a series of ten expedients: (1) the city colony; (2) the farm colony; (3) the over-sea colony; (4) the household salvage brigade; (5) the rescue homes for fallen women; (6) deliverance for the drunkard; (7) the prison-gate brigade; (8) the poor man’s bank; (9) the poor man’s lawyer; (10) Whitechapel-by-the-Sea. Money was liberally subscribed and a large part of the scheme was carried out. The opposition and ridicule with which Booth’s work was for many years received gave way, towards the end of the 19th century, to very widespread sympathy as his genius and its results were more fully realized.

The active encouragement of King Edward VII., at whose instance in 1902 he was invited officially to be present at the coronation ceremony, marked the completeness of the change; and when, in 1905, the “general” went on a progress through England, he was received in state by the mayors and corporations of many towns. In the United States also, and elsewhere, his work was cordially encouraged by the authorities.

See T.F. Coates, The Life Story of General Booth (2nd ed., London, 1906), and bibliography under Salvation Army.


BOOTH (connected with a Teutonic root meaning to dwell, whence also “bower”), primarily a temporary dwelling of boughs or other slight materials. Later the word gained the special meaning of a market stall or any non-permanent erection, such as a tent at a fair, where goods were on sale. Later still it was applied to the temporary structure where votes were registered, viz. polling-booth. Temporary booths erected for the weekly markets naturally tended to become permanent shops. Thus Stow states that the houses in Old Fish Street, London, “were at first but movable boards set out on market days to show their fish there to be sold; but procuring licence to set up sheds, they grew to shops, and by little and little, to tall houses.” As bothy or bothie, in Scotland, meaning generally a hut or cottage, the word was specially applied to a barrack-like room on large farms where the unmarried labourers were lodged. This, known as the Bothy system, was formerly common in Aberdeenshire and other parts of northern Scotland.


BOOTHIA (Boothia Felix), a peninsula of British North America, belonging to Franklin district, and having an area of 13,100 sq. m., between 69° 30′ and 71° 50′ N. and 91° 30′ and 97° W. Its northernmost promontory, Murchison Point, is also the northernmost point of the American mainland. It was discovered by Captain (afterwards Sir James) Ross, during his expedition of 1829-1833, and was named after Sir Felix Booth, who had been chiefly instrumental in fitting out the expedition. Boothia forms the western side of Boothia Gulf. From the main mass of the continent the peninsula is almost separated by lakes and inlets; and a narrow channel known as Bellot Strait intervenes between it and North Somerset Island, which was discovered by Sir E. Parry in 1819. The peninsula is not only interesting for its connexion with the Franklin expedition and the Franklin search, but is of scientific importance from the north magnetic pole having been first distinctly localized here by Ross, on the western side, in 70° 5′ N., 96° 47′ W.

Boothia Gulf separates the north-western portion of Baffin Land and Melville Peninsula from Boothia Peninsula. It is connected with Barrow Strait and Lancaster Sound by Prince Regent Inlet, with Franklin Strait by Bellot Strait, and with Fox Channel by Fury and Hecla Strait. The principal bays are Committee and Pelly in the southern portion, and Lord Mayor in the western.


BOOTLE, a municipal and county borough in the Bootle parliamentary division of Lancashire, England; at the mouth of the Mersey, forming a northern suburb of Liverpool. Pop. (1901) 58,566; an increase by nearly nine times in forty years. The great docks on this, the east bank of the Mersey, extend into the borough, but are considered as a whole under Liverpool (q.v.). Such features, moreover, as communications, water-supply, &c., may be considered as part of the greater systems of the same city. The chief buildings and institutions are a handsome town hall, a museum, free libraries, technical schools, and several public pleasure grounds. Bootle was incorporated in 1868 and was created a county borough in 1888; the corporation consists of a mayor, 10 aldermen and 30 councillors. A proposal to include it within the city of Liverpool was rejected in parliament in July 1903. Area, 1576 acres.


BOOTY (apparently influenced by “boot,” 0. Eng. bot, advantage or profit, through an adaptation from an earlier form cognate with Ger. Beute and Fr. butin), plunder or gain. The phrase “to play booty,” dating from the 16th century, means to play into a confederate’s hands, or to play intentionally badly at first in order to deceive an opponent.


BOPP, FRANZ (1791-1867), German philologist, was born at Mainz on the 14th of September 1791. In consequence of the political troubles of that time, his parents removed to Aschaffenburg, in Bavaria, where he received a liberal education at the Lyceum. It was here that his attention was drawn to the languages and literature of the East by the eloquent lectures of Karl J. Windischmann, who, with G.F. Creuzer, J.J. Görres, and the brothers Schlegel, was full of enthusiasm for Indian wisdom and philosophy. And further, Fr. Schlegel’s book, Über die Sprache und Weisheit der Indier (Heidelberg, 1808), which was just then exerting a powerful influence on the minds of German philosophers and historians, could not fail to stimulate also Bopp’s interest in the sacred language of the Hindus. In 1812 he went to Paris at the expense of the Bavarian government, with a view to devote himself vigorously to the study of Sanskrit. There he enjoyed the society of such eminent men as A.L. Chézy, S. de Sacy, L.M. Langlès, and, above all, of Alexander Hamilton (1762-1824), who had acquired, when in India, an acquaintance with Sanskrit, and had brought out, conjointly with Langlès, a descriptive catalogue of the Sanskrit manuscripts of the Imperial library. At that library Bopp had access not only to the rich collection of Sanskrit manuscripts, most of which had been brought from India by Father Pons early in the 18th century, but also to the Sanskrit books which had up to that time issued from the Calcutta and Serampore presses. The first fruit of his four years’ study in Paris appeared at Frankfort-On-Main in 1816, under the title Über das Conjugationssystem der Sanskritsprache in Vergleichung mit jenem der griechischen, lateinischen, persischen und germanischen Sprache, and it was accompanied with a preface from the pen of Windischmann. In this first book Bopp entered at once on the path on which the philological researches of his whole subsequent life were concentrated. It was not that he wished to prove the common parentage of Sanskrit with Persian, Greek, Latin and German, for that had long been established; but his object was to trace the common origin of their grammatical forms, of their inflections from composition,—a task which had never been attempted. By a historical analysis of those forms, as applied to the verb, he furnished the first trustworthy materials for a history of the languages compared.

After a brief sojourn in Germany, Bopp came to London, where he made the acquaintance of Sir Charles Wilkins and H.T. Colebrooke, and became the friend of Wilhelm von Humboldt, then Prussian ambassador at the court of St James’s, to whom he gave instruction in Sanskrit. He brought out, in the Annals of Oriental Literature (London, 1820), an essay entitled, “Analytical Comparison of the Sanskrit, Greek, Latin and Teutonic Languages,” in which he extended to all parts of the grammar what he had done in his first book for the verb alone. He had previously published a critical edition, with a Latin translation and notes, of the story of Nala and Damayantī (London, 1819), the most beautiful episode of the Mahābhārata. Other episodes of the Mahābhārata—Indralokāgamanam, and three others (Berlin, 1824); Diluvium, and three others (Berlin, 1829); and a new edition of Nala (Berlin, 1832)—followed in due course, all of which, with A.W. Schlegel’s edition of the Bhagavadgītā (1823), proved excellent aids in initiating the early student into the reading of Sanskrit texts. On the publication, in Calcutta, of the whole Mahābhārata, Bopp discontinued editing Sanskrit texts, and confined himself thenceforth exclusively to grammatical investigations.

After a short residence at Göttingen, Bopp was, on the recommendation of Humboldt, appointed to the chair of Sanskrit and comparative grammar at Berlin in 1821, and was elected member of the Royal Prussian Academy in the following year. He brought out, in 1827, his Ausführliches Lehrgebäude der Sanskrita-Sprache, on which he had been engaged since 1821. A new edition, in Latin, was commenced in the following year, and completed in 1832; and a shorter grammar appeared in 1834. At the same time he compiled a Sanskrit and Latin glossary (1830) in which, more especially in the second and third editions (1847 and 1867), account was also taken of the cognate languages. His chief activity, however, centred on the elaboration of his Comparative Grammar, which appeared in six parts at considerable intervals (Berlin, 1833, 1835, 1842, 1847, 1849, 1852), under the title Vergleichende Grammatik des Sanskrit, Zend, Griechischen, Lateinischen, Litthauischen, Altslavischen, Gothischen, und Deutschen. How carefully this work was matured may be gathered from the series of monographs printed in the Transactions of the Berlin Academy (1824 to 1831), by which it was preceded. They bear the general title, Vergleichende Zergliederung des Sanskrits und der mit ihm verwandten Sprachen. Two other essays (on the “Numerals,” 1835) followed the publication of the first part of the Comparative Grammar. The Old-Slavonian began to take its stand among the languages compared from the second part onwards. The work was translated into English by E.B. Eastwick in 1845. A second German edition, thoroughly revised (1856-1861), comprised also the Old-Armenian. From this edition an excellent French translation was made by Professor Michel Bréal in 1866. The task which Bopp endeavoured to carry out in his Comparative Grammar was threefold,—to give a description of the original grammatical structure of the languages as deduced from their intercomparison, to trace their phonetic laws, and to investigate the origin of their grammatical forms. The first and second points were subservient to the third. As Bopp’s researches were based on the best available sources, and incorporated every new item of information that came to light, so they continued to widen and deepen in their progress. Witness his monographs on the vowel system in the Teutonic languages (1836), on the Celtic languages (1839), on the Old-Prussian (1853) and Albanian languages (1854), on the accent in Sanskrit and Greek (1854), on the relationship of the Malayo-Polynesian with the Indo-European languages (1840), and on the Caucasian languages (1846). In the two last mentioned the impetus of his genius led him on a wrong track. Bopp has been charged with neglecting the study of the native Sanskrit grammars, but in those early days of Sanskrit studies the requisite materials were not accessible in the great libraries of Europe; and if they had been, they would have absorbed his exclusive attention for years, while such grammars as those of Wilkins and Colebrooke, from which his grammatical knowledge was derived, were all based on native grammars. The further charge that Bopp, in his Comparative Grammar, gave undue prominence to Sanskrit may be disproved by his own words; for, as early as the year 1820, he gave it as his opinion that frequently the cognate languages serve to elucidate grammatical forms lost in Sanskrit (Annals of Or. Lit. i. 3),—an opinion which he further developed in all his subsequent writings.

Bopp’s researches, carried with wonderful penetration into the most minute and almost microscopical details of linguistic phenomena, have led to the opening up of a wide and distant view into the original seats, the closer or more distant affinity, and the tenets, practices and domestic usages of the ancient Indo-European nations, and the science of comparative grammar may truly be said to date from his earliest publication. In grateful recognition of that fact, on the fiftieth anniversary (May 16, 1866) of the date of Windischmann’s preface to that work, a fund called Die Bopp-Stiftung, for the promotion of the study of Sanskrit and comparative grammar, was established at Berlin, to which liberal contributions were made by his numerous pupils and admirers in all parts of the globe. Bopp lived to see the results of his labours everywhere accepted, and his name justly celebrated. But he died, on the 23rd of October 1867, a poor man,—though his genuine kindliness and unselfishness, his devotion to his family and friends, and his rare modesty, endeared him to all who knew him.

See M. Bréal’s translation of Bopp’s Vergl. Gramm. (1866) introduction; Th. Benfey, Gesch. der Sprachwissenschaft (1869); A. Kuhn in Unsere Zeit, Neue Folge, iv. i (1868); Lefmann, Franz Bopp (Berlin, 1891-1897).


BOPPARD, a town of Germany, in the Prussian Rhine province, on the left bank of the Rhine, 12 m. S. of Coblenz on the mainline to Cologne. Pop. (1900) 5806. It is an old town still partly surrounded by medieval walls, and its most noteworthy buildings are the Roman Catholic parish church (12th and 13th centuries); the Carmelite church (1318), the former castle, now used for administrative offices; the Evangelical church (1851, enlarged in 1887); and the former Benedictine motnastery of the Marienberg, founded 1123 and since 1839 a hydropathic establishment, crowning a hill 100 ft. above the Rhine. Boppard is a favourite tourist centre, and being less pent in by hills than many other places in this part of the picturesque gorge of the Rhine, has in modern times become a residential town. It has some comparatively insignificant industries, such as tanning and tobacco manufacture; its direct trade is in wine and fruit.

Boppard (Baudobriga) was founded by the Romans; under the Merovingian dynasty it became a royal residence. During the middle ages it was a considerable centre of commerce and shipping, and under the Hohenstaufen emperors was raised to the rank of a free imperial city. In 1312, however, the emperor Henry VII. pledged the town to his brother Baldwin, archbishop-elector of Trier, and it remained in the possession of the electors until it was absorbed by France during the Revolutionary epoch. It was assigned by the congress of Vienna in 1815 to Prussia.


BORA, an Italian name for a violent cold northerly and northeasterly wind, common in the Adriatic, especially on the Istrian and Dalmatian coasts. There is always a northern tendency in the winds on the north Mediterranean shores in winter owing to the cold air of the mountains sliding down to the sea where the pressure is less. When, therefore, a cyclone is formed over the Mediterranean, the currents in its north-western area draw the air from the cold northern regions, and during the passage of the cyclone the bora prevails. The bora also occurs at Novorossiysk on the Black Sea. It is precisely similar in character to the mistral which prevails in Provence and along the French Mediterranean littoral.


BORACITE, a mineral of special interest on account of its optical anomalies. Small crystals bounded on all sides by sharply defined faces are found in considerable numbers embedded in gypsum and anhydrite in the salt deposits at Lüneburg in Hanover, where it was first observed in 1787. In external form these crystals are cubic with inclined hemihedrism, the symmetry being the same as in blende and tetrahedrite. Their habit varies according to whether the tetrahedron (fig. 1), the cube (fig. 2). or the rhombic dodecahedron (fig. 3) predominates. Penetration twins with a tetrahedron face as twin-plane are sometimes observed. The crystals vary from translucent to transparent, are possessed of a vitreous lustre, and are colourless or white, though often tinged with grey, yellow or green. The hardness is as high as 7 on Mohs’ scale; specific gravity 3.0. As first observed by R.J. Haüy in 1791, the crystals are markedly pyroelectric; a cube when heated becomes positively electrified on four of its corners and negatively on the four opposite corners. In a crystal such as represented in fig. 3, the smaller and dull tetrahedral faces s are situated at the analogous poles (which become positively electrified when the crystal is heated), and the larger and bright tetrahedral faces s’ at the antilogous poles.

The characters so far enumerated are strictly in accordance with cubic symmetry, but when a crystal is examined in polarized light, it will be seen to be doubly refracting, as was first observed by Sir David Brewster in 1821. Thin sections show twin-lamellae, and a division into definite areas which are optically biaxial. By cutting sections in suitable directions, it may be proved that a rhombic dodecahedral crystal is really built up of twelve orthorhombic pyramids, the apices of which meet in the centre and the bases coincide with the dodecahedral faces of the compound (pseudo-cubic) crystal. Crystals of other forms show other types of internal structure. When the crystals are heated these optical characters change, and at a temperature of 265° the crystals suddenly become optically isotropic; on cooling, however, the complexity of internal structure reappears. Various explanations have been offered to account for these “optical anomalies” of boracite. Some observers have attributed them to alteration, others to internal strains in the crystals, which originally grew as truly cubic at a temperature above 265°. It would, however, appear that there are really two crystalline modifications of the boracite substance, a cubic modification stable above 265° and an orthorhombic (or monoclinic) one stable at a lower temperature. This is strictly analogous to the case of silver iodide, of which cubic and rhombohedral modifications exist at different temperatures; but whereas rhombohedral as well as pseudo-cubic crystals of silver iodide (iodyrite) are known in nature, only pseudo-cubic crystals of boracite have as yet been met with.

Chemically, boracite is a magnesium borate and chloride with the formula Mg7Cl2B16O30—A small amount of iron is sometimes present, and an iron-boracite with half the magnesium replaced by ferrous iron has been called huyssenite. The mineral is insoluble in water, but soluble in hydrochloric acid. On exposure it is liable to slow alteration, owing to the absorption of water by the magnesium chloride: an altered form is known as parasite.

In addition to embedded crystals, a massive variety, known as stassfurtite, occurs as nodules in the salt deposits at Stassfurt in Prussia: that from the carnallite layer is compact, resembling fine-grained marble, and white or greenish in colour, whilst that from the kainite layer is soft and earthy, and yellowish or reddish in colour.

(L. J. S.)


BORAGE (pronounced like “courage”; possibly from Lat. borra, rough hair), a herb (Borago officinalis) with bright blue flowers and hairy leaves and stem, considered to have some virtue as a cordial and a febrifuge; used as an ingredient in salads or in making claret-cup, &c.


BORAGINACEAE, an order of plants belonging to the sympetalous section of dicotyledons, and a member of the series Tubiflorae. It is represented in Britain by bugloss (Echium) (fig. 1), comfrey (Symphytum), Myosotis, hounds-tongue (Cynoglossum) (fig. 2), and other genera, while borage (Borago officinalis) (fig. 3) occurs as a garden escape in waste ground. The plants are rough-haired annual or perennial herbs, more rarely shrubby or arborescent, as in Cordia and Ehretia, which are tropical or sub-tropical. The leaves, which are generally alternate, are usually entire and narrow: the radical leaves in some genera, as Pulmonaria (lungwort) and Cynoglossum, differ in form from the stem-leaves, being generally broader and sometimes heart-shaped. A characteristic feature is the one-sided (dorsiventral) inflorescence, well illustrated in forget-me-not and other species of Myosotis; the cyme is at first closely coiled, becoming uncoiled as the flowers open. At the same time there is often a change in colour in the flowers, which are red in bud, becoming blue as they expand, as in Myosotis, Echium, Symphytum and others. The flowers are generally regular; the form of the corolla varies widely. Thus in borage it is rotate, tubular in comfrey, funnel-shaped in hounds-tongue, and salver-shaped in alkanet (Anchusa); the throat is often closed by scale-like outgrowths from the corolla, forming the so-called corona. A departure from the usual regular corolla occurs in Echium and a few allied genera, where it is oblique; in Lycopsis it is also bent.

1. Single flower, about nat. size.

2. Corolla split open.

3. Calyx.

4. Pistil.

5. One stamen.

6. Calyx surrounding nutlets.

7. Same part of calyx cut away.

8. Two nutlets.

9. Same enlarged.

The five stamens alternate in position with the lobes of the corolla. The ovary, of two carpels, is seated on a ring-like disk which secretes honey. Each carpel becomes divided by a median constriction in four portions, each containing one ovule; the style springs from the centre of the group of four divisions.

Fig. 2.—(1) Inflorescence of Forget-me-not; (2) ripe fruits.

The flowers show well-marked adaptation to insect-visits. Their colour and tendency to arrangement on one surface, with the presence of honey, serve to attract insects. The scales around the throat of the corolla protect the pollen and honey from wet or undesirable visitors, and by their difference in colour from the corolla-lobes, as in the yellow eye of forget-me-not, may serve to indicate the position of the honey. In most genera the fruit consists of one-seeded nutlets, generally four, but one or more may be undeveloped. The shape of the nutlet and the character of its coat are very varied. Thus in Lithospermum the nutlets are hard like a stone, in Myosotis usually polished, in Cynoglossum covered with bristles, &c.

The order is widely spread in temperate and tropical regions, and contains 85 genera with about 1200 species. Its chief centre is the Mediterranean region, whence it extends over central Europe and Asia, becoming less frequent northwards. A smaller centre occurs on the Pacific side of North America. The order is less developed in the south temperate zone.

The order is of little economic value. Several genera, such as borage and Pulmonaria, were formerly used in medicine, and the roots yield purple or brown dyes, as in Alkanna tinctoria (alkanet). Heliotrope or cherry-pie (Heliotropium peruvianum) is a well-known garden plant.


BORÅS, a town of Sweden, in the district (län) of Elfsborg, 45 m. E. of Gothenburg by rail, on the river Viske. Pop. (1880) 4723; (1900) 15,837. It ranks among the first twelve towns in Sweden both in population and in the value of its manufacturing industries. These are principally textile, as there are numerous cotton spinning and weaving mills, together with a technical weaving school. The town was founded in 1632 by King Gustavus Adolphus.


BORAX (sodium pyroborate or sodium biborate), Na2B4O7, a substance which appears in commerce under two forms, namely “common” or prismatic borax, Na2B4O7·10H2O, and “jewellers’” or octahedral borax, Na2B4O7·5H2O. It is to be noted that the term “borax” was used by the alchemists in a very vague manner, and is therefore not to be taken as meaning the substance now specifically known by the name. Prismatic borax is found widely distributed as a natural product (see below, Mineralogy) in Tibet, and in Canada, Peru and Transylvania, while the bed of Borax Lake, near Clear Lake in California, is occupied by a large mass of crystallized borax, which is fit for use by the assayer without undergoing any preliminary purification. The supply of borax is, however, mainly derived from the boric acid of Tuscany, which is fused in a reverberatory furnace with half its weight of sodium carbonate, and the mass after cooling is extracted with warm water. An alternative method is to dissolve sodium carbonate in lead-lined steam-heated pans, and add the boric acid gradually; the solution then being concentrated until the borax crystallizes. Borax is also prepared from the naturally occurring calcium borate, which is mixed in a finely divided condition with the requisite quantity of soda ash; the mixture is fused, extracted with water and concentrated until the solution commences to crystallize.

From a supersaturated aqueous solution of borax, the pentahydrate, Na2B4O7·5H2O, is deposited when evaporation takes place at somewhat high temperatures. The same hydrate can be prepared by dissolving borax in water until the solution has a specific gravity of 1.246 and then allowing the solution to cool. The pentahydrate is deposited between 79° C. and 56° C.; below this temperature the decahydrate or ordinary borax, Na2B4O7·10H2O, is deposited. Crystals of ordinary borax swell up to a very great extent on heating, losing their water of crystallization and melting to a clear white glass. The crystals of octahedral borax fuse more easily than those of the prismatic form and are less liable to split when heated, so that they are preferable for soldering or fluxing. Fused borax dissolves many metallic oxides, forming complex borates which in many cases show characteristic colours. Its use in soldering depends on the fact that solder only adheres to the surface of an untarnished metal, and consequently a little borax is placed on the surface of the metal and heated by the soldering iron in order to remove any superficial film of oxide. It is also used for glazing pottery, in glass-making and the glazing of linen.

Boric acid (q.v.) being only a weak acid, its salts readily undergo hydrolytic dissociation in aqueous solution, and this property can be readily shown with a concentrated aqueous solution of borax, for by adding litmus and then just sufficient acetic acid to turn the litmus red, the addition of a large volume of water to the solution changes the colour back to blue again. The boric acid being scarcely ionized gives only a very small quantity of hydrogen ions, whilst the base (sodium hydroxide) produced by the hydrolysis occasioned by the dilution of the solution, being a “strong base,” is highly ionized and gives a comparatively large amount of hydroxyl ions. In the solution, therefore, there is now an excess of hydroxyl ions; consequently it has an alkaline reaction and the litmus turns blue.

Mineralogy.—The Tibetan mineral deposits have been known since very early times, and formerly the crude material was exported to Europe, under the name of tincal, for the preparation of pure borax and other boron salts. The most westerly of the Tibetan deposits are in the lake-plain of Pugha on the Rulangchu, a tributary of the Indus, at an elevation of 15,000 ft.: here the impure borax (sohaga) occurs over an area of about 2 sq. m., and is covered by a saline efflorescence; successive crops are obtained by the action of rain and snow and subsequent evaporation. Deposits of purer material (chú tsalé or water borax) occur at the lakes of Rudok, situated to the east of the Pugha district; also still farther to the east at the great lakes Tengri Nor, north of Lhasa, and several other places. More recently, the extensive deposits of borates (chiefly, however, of calcium; see Colemanite) in the Mohave desert on the borders of California and Nevada, and in the Atacama desert in South America, have been the chief commercial sources of boron compounds. The boron contained in solution in the salt lakes has very probably been supplied by hot springs and solfataras of volcanic origin, such as those which at the present day charge the waters of the lagoons in Tuscany with boric acid. The deposits formed by evaporation from these lakes and marshes or salines, are mixtures of borates, various alkaline salts (sodium carbonate, sulphate, chloride), gypsum, &c. In the mud of the lakes and in the surrounding marshy soil fine isolated crystals of borax are frequently found. For example, crystals up to 7 in. in length and weighing a pound each have been found in large numbers at Borax Lake in Lake county, and at Borax Lake in San Bernardino county, both in California.

Borax crystallizes with ten molecules of water, the composition of the crystals being Na2B4O7 + 10H2O. The crystals belong to the monoclinic system, and it is a curious fact that in habit and angles they closely resemble pyroxene (a silicate of calcium, magnesium and iron). There is a perfect cleavage parallel to the orthopinacoid and less perfect cleavages parallel to the faces of the prism. The mineral is transparent to opaque and white, sometimes greyish, bluish or greenish in colour. Hardness 2-2½; sp. gr. 1.69-1.72.

The optical characters are interesting, because of the striking crossed dispersion of the optic axes, of which phenomenon borax affords the best example. The optic figure seen in convergent polarized light through a section cut parallel to the plane of symmetry of a borax crystal is symmetrical only with respect to the central point. The plane of the optic axes for red light is inclined at 2° to that for blue light, and the angle between the optic axes themselves is 3° greater for red than for blue light.


BORDA, JEAN CHARLES (1733-1799), French mathematician and nautical astronomer, was born at Dax on the 4th of May 1733. He studied at La Flèche, and at an early age obtained a commission in the cavalry. In 1756 he presented a Mémoire sur le mouvement des projectiles to the Academy of Sciences, who elected him a member. He was present at the battle of Hastembeck, and soon afterwards joined the naval service. He visited the Azores and the Canary Islands, of which he constructed an admirable map. In 1782 his frigate was taken by a British squadron; he himself was carried to England, but was almost immediately released on parole and returned to France. He died at Paris on the 20th of February 1799. Borda contributed a long series of valuable memoirs to the Academy of Sciences. His researches in hydrodynamics were highly useful for marine engineering, while the reflecting and repeating circles, as improved by him, were of great service in nautical astronomy. He was associated with J.B.J. Delambre and P.F.A. Méchain in the attempt to determine an arc of the meridian, and the greater number of the instruments employed in the task were invented by him.

See J.B. Biot, “Notice sur Borda” in the Mém. de l’Acad. des Sciences, iv.


BORDAGE. (i) A nautical term (from Fr. bord, side) for the planking on a ship’s side. (2) A feudal term (from Lat. borda, a cottage) for the tenure by which a certain class of villein held their cottages; also the services due from these villeins or “bordars.” A “bordar” (Med. Lat. bardarius) was a villein who obtained a cottage from his lord in return for menial services (see Villenage).


BORDEAUX, a city of south-western France, capital of the department of Gironde, 359 m. S.S.W. of Paris by a main line of the Orléans railway and 159 m. N.W. of Toulouse on the main line of the Southern railway. Pop. (1906) 237,707. Bordeaux, one of the finest and most extensive cities in France, is situated on the left or west bank of the Garonne about 60 m. from the sea, in a plain which comprises the wine-growing district of Médoc. The Garonne at this point describes a semicircle, separating the city proper on the left bank from the important suburb of La Bastide on the right bank. The river is crossed by the Pont de Bordeaux, a fine stone structure of the early 19th century, measuring 1534 ft. in length, and by a railway bridge connecting the station of the Orléans railway company in La Bastide with that of the Southern company on the left bank. Looking west from the Pont de Bordeaux, the view embraces a crescent of wide and busy quays with a background of lofty warehouses, factories and mansions, behind which rise towers and steeples. Almost at the centre of the line of quays is the Place des Quinconces, round which lie the narrow, winding streets in which the life of the city is concentrated. Outside this quarter, which contains most of the important buildings, the streets are narrow and quiet and bordered by the low white houses which at Bordeaux take the place of the high tenements characteristic of other large French towns. The whole city is surrounded by a semicircle of boulevards, beyond which lie the suburbs of Le Bouscat, Caudéran, Mérignac, Talence and Bégles. The principal promenades are situated close together near the centre of the city. They comprise the beautiful public garden, the allées de Tourny and the Place des Quinconces. The latter is planted with plane trees, among which stand two huge statues of Montaigne and Montesquieu, and terminates upon the quays with two rostral columns which serve as lighthouses. On its west side there is a monument to the Girondin deputies proscribed under the convention in 1793. At its south-west corner the Place des Quinconces opens into the Place de la Comédie, which contains the Grand Théâtre (18th century), the masterpiece of the architect Victor Louis. The Place de la Comédie, the centre of business in Bordeaux, is traversed by a street which, under the names of Cours du Chapeau-Rouge, rue de l’Intendance and rue Judaïque, runs from the Place de la Bourse and the quai de la Douane on the east to the outer boulevards on the west. Another important thoroughfare, the rue Sainte Cathérine, runs at right angles to the rue de l’Intendance and enters the Place de la Comédie on the south. The Pont de Bordeaux is continued by the Cours Victor Hugo, a curved street crossing the rue Sainte Cathérine and leading to the cathedral of St André. This church, dating from the 11th to the 14th centuries, is a building in the Gothic style with certain Romanesque features, chief among which are the arches in the nave. It consists of a large nave without aisles, a transept at the extremities of which are the main entrances, and a choir, flanked by double aisles and chapels and containing many works of art. Both the north and south façades are richly decorated with sculpture and statuary. Of the four towers flanking the principal portals, only those to the north are surmounted by spires. Near the choir stands an isolated tower. It contains the great bell of the cathedral and is known as the Clocher Pey-Berland, after the archbishop of Bordeaux who erected it in the 15th century. Of the numerous other churches of Bordeaux the most notable are St Seurin (11th to the 15th centuries), with a finely sculptured southern portal; Ste Croix (12th and 13th centuries), remarkable for its Romanesque façade; and St Michel, a fine Gothic building of the 15th and 16th centuries. The bell tower of St Michel, which has the highest spire (354 ft.) in the south of France, dates from the end of the 15th century, and, like that of the cathedral, stands apart from its church. The palace of the Faculties of Science and of Letters (1881-1886) contains the tomb of Michel de Montaigne. The prefecture, the hôtel de ville, the bourse and the custom-house belong to the 15th century. The law-courts and the hospital of St André (the foundation of which dates from 1390) belong to the first half of the 19th century. Of greater antiquarian interest is the Palais Gallien, situated near the public garden, consisting of remains of lofty arcades, vaulting and fragments of wall, which once formed part of a Roman amphitheatre. Bordeaux lost its fortifications in the 18th century, but four of the old gateways or triumphal arches belonging to that period still remain. Still older are the Porte de Cailhau, once the entrance to the Palais de l’Ombrière, which before its destruction was the residence of the duke of Aquitaine, and the Porte de l’Hôtel de Ville, the former of the 15th, the latter of the 13th and 16th centuries.

Bordeaux is the seat of an archbishop, the headquarters of the XVIII. army corps, the centre of an académie (educational division) and the seat of a court of appeal. A court of assizes is held there, and there are tribunals of first instance and of commerce, a council of trade-arbitrators, a chamber of commerce and a branch of the Bank of France. Its educational institutions include faculties of law, of science, of letters and of medicine and pharmacy, a faculty of Catholic theology, lycées, training colleges, a higher school of commerce, a chair of agriculture, a school of fine art and a naval school of medicine. There are several museums, including one with a large collection of pictures and sculptures, a library with over 200,000 volumes and numerous learned societies.

The trade of Bordeaux, the fourth port in France, is chiefly carried on by sea. Its port, 5½ m. long and on the average 550 yds. wide, is formed by the basin of the Garonne and is divided into two portions by the Pont de Bordeaux. That to the south is used only by small craft; that to the north is accessible to vessels drawing from 21 to 26 ft. according to the state of the tide. From 1000 to 1200 vessels can be accommodated in the harbour, which is lined on both sides by quays and sloping wharves served by railway lines. At the northen extremity of the harbour, on the left bank, there is a floating basin of 25 acres in extent, capable of receiving the largest vessels; it has over 1900 yds. of quays and is furnished with a repairing dock and with elaborate machinery for the loading and unloading of goods. In 1907 the construction of new docks behind this basin was begun. The city maintains commercial relations with nearly all countries, but chiefly with Great Britain, Spain, Argentina, Portugal and the United States. The most important line of steamers using the port is the South American service of the Messageries Maritimes. The total value of the exports and imports of Bordeaux averages between 25 and 26 millions sterling yearly. Of this amount exports make up 13½ millions, of which the sales of wine bring in about one quarter. The city is the centre of the trade in “Bordeaux” wines, and the wine-cellars of the quays are one of its principal sights. Other principal exports are brandy, hides and skins, sugar, rice, woollen and cotton goods, salt-fish, chemicals, oil-cake, pitwood, fruit, potatoes and other vegetables. The chief imports are wool, fish, timber, rice, wine, rubber, coal, oil-grains, hardware, agricultural and other machinery and chemicals. A large fleet is annually despatched to the cod-fisheries of Newfoundland and Iceland. The most important industry is ship-building and refitting. Ironclads and torpedo-boats as well as merchant vessels are constructed. Railway carriages are also built. The industries subsidiary to the wine-trade, such as wine-mixing, cooperage and the making of bottles, corks, capsules, straw envelopes and wooden cases, occupy many hands. There are also flour-mills, sugar-refineries, breweries, distilleries, oil-works, cod-drying works, manufactories of canned and preserved fruits, vegetables and meat, and of chocolate. Chemicals, leather, iron-ware, machinery and pottery are manufactured, and a tobacco factory employs 1500 hands.

Bordeaux (Burdigala) was originally the chief town of the Bituriges Vivisci. Under the Roman empire it became a flourishing commercial city, and in the 4th century it was made the capital of Aquitania Secunda. Ausonius, a writer of the 4th century, who was a native of the place, describes it as four-square and surrounded with walls and lofty towers, and celebrates its importance as one of the greatest educational centres of Gaul. In the evils that resulted from the disintegration of the empire Bordeaux had its full share, and did not recover its prosperity till the beginning of the 10th century. Along with Guienne it belonged to the English kings for nearly three hundred years (1154-1453), and was for a time the seat of the brilliant court of Edward the Black Prince, whose son Richard was born in the city. An extensive commerce was gradually developed between the Bordeaux merchants and their fellow-subjects in England,—London, Hull, Exeter, Dartmouth, Bristol and Chester being the principal ports with which they traded. The English administration was favourable to the liberties as well as to the trade of the city. In 1235 it received the right of electing its mayors, who were assisted in the administration by a “jurade” or municipal council. The influence of Bordeaux was still further increased when several important towns of the region, among them St Emilion and Libourne, united in a federation under its leadership. The defeat of the English at the battle of Castillon in 1453 was followed, after a siege of three months, by the submission of Bordeaux to Charles VII. The privileges of the city were at once curtailed, and were only partially restored under Louis XI., who established there the parlement of Guienne. In 1548 the inhabitants resisted the imposition of the salt-tax by force of arms, a rebellion for which they were punished by the constable Anne de Montmorency with merciless severity.

The reformed religion found numerous adherents at Bordeaux, and after the massacre of St Bartholomew nearly three hundred of its inhabitants lost their lives. The 17th century was a period of disturbance. The city was for a time the chief support of the Fronde, and on two occasions, in 1653 and 1675, troops were sent to repress insurrections against royal measures. In the middle of the 18th century, a period of commercial and architectural activity for Bordeaux, the marquis de Tourny, intendant of Guienne, did much to improve the city by widening the streets and laying out public squares. It was the headquarters of the Girondists at the Revolution, and during the Reign of Terror suffered almost as severely as Lyons and Marseilles. Its commerce was greatly reduced under Napoleon I. In 1814 it declared for the house of Bourbon; and Louis XVIII. afterwards gave the title of duc de Bordeaux to his grand-nephew, better known as the comte de Chambord. In 1870 the French government was transferred to Bordeaux from Tours on the approach of the Germans to the latter city.

See Camille Jullian, Hist. de Bordeaux, depuis les origines jusqu’en 1895 (Bordeaux, 1895); T. Malvezin, Hist. du commerce de Bordeaux (Bordeaux, 1892); Bordeaux, aperçu historique, sol, population, industrie, commerce, administration (Bordeaux, 1892).


BORDEN, SIR FREDERICK WILLIAM (1847- ), Canadian statesman, was born at Cornwallis, Nova Scotia, on the 14th of May 1847. He was educated at King’s College, Windsor, and at Harvard University, and for some years practised medicine at Canning, Nova Scotia. In 1874 he was elected to the Canadian parliament as Liberal member for King’s county. In 1896 he became minister of militia and defence in the Liberal ministry.


BORDEN, ROBERT LAIRD (1854- ), Canadian statesman, was born at Grand Pré, Nova Scotia, on the 26th of June 1854. In 1878 he was called to the bar, and became a leading lawyer in his native province. In 1896 he was elected to the Canadian parliament for the city of Halifax, but later lost his seat there and was elected for Carlton. In February 1901, on the resignation of Sir Charles Tupper, he became leader of the Conservative opposition. At the general election of 1908 he was returned again for Halifax.


BORDENTOWN, a city of Burlington county, New Jersey, U.S.A., on the E. bank of the Delaware river, 6 m. S. of Trenton and 28 m. N.E. of Philadelphia. Pop. (1890) 4232; (1900) 4110; (1905) 4073; (1910) 4250. It is served by the Pennsylvania railway, the Camden & Trenton railway (an electric line, forming part of the line between Philadelphia and New York) and by freight and passenger steamboat lines on the Delaware. Bordentown is attractively situated on a broad, level plain, 65 ft. above the river, with wide, beautifully shaded streets. The city is the seat of the Bordentown Military Institute (with the Woodward memorial library), of the state manual training and industrial school for coloured youth, of the St Joseph’s convent and mother-house of the Sisters of Mercy, and of St Joseph’s academy for girls. There are ship-yards, iron foundries and forges, machine shops, shirt factories, a pottery for the manufacture of sanitary earthenware, a woollen mill and canning factories. The first settlers on the site of the city were several Quaker families who came in the 18th century. Bordentown was laid out by Joseph Borden, in whose honour it was named; was incorporated as a borough in 1825; was re-incorporated in 1849, and was chartered as a city in 1867. It was the home for some years of Francis Hopkinson and of his son Joseph Hopkinson (whose residences are still standing), and from 1817 to 1832 and in 1837-1839 was the home of Joseph Bonaparte, ex-king of Spain, who lived on a handsome estate known as “Bonaparte’s Park,” which he laid out with considerable magnificence. Here he entertained many distinguished visitors, including Lafayette. The legislature of New Jersey passed a special law, enabling him, as an alien, to own real property, and it is said to have been in reference to this that the state received its nickname “Spain.” Prince Napoleon Lucien Charles Murat, the second son of Joachim Murat, also lived here for many years; and the estate known as “Ironsides” was long the home of Rear-Admiral Charles Stewart. The Camden & Amboy railway, begun in 1831 and completed from Bordentown to South Amboy (34 m.) in 1832, was one of the first railways in the United States; in September 1831 the famous engine “Johnny Bull,” built in England and imported for this railway, had its first trial at Bordentown, and a monument now marks the site where the first rails were laid.

See E.M. Woodward, Bonaparte’s Park and the Murats (Trenton, 1879).


BORDERS, THE, a name applied to the territory on both sides of the boundary line between England and Scotland. The term has also a literary and historical as well as a geographical sense, and is most frequently employed of the Scottish side. The line begins on the coast of Berwickshire at a spot 3 m. N. by W. of Berwick, and, after running a short distance W. and S., reaches the Tweed near the village of Paxton, whence it keeps to the river to a point just beyond Carham. There it strikes off S.S.E. to the Cheviot Hills, the watershed of which for 35 m. constitutes the boundary, which is thereafter formed by a series of streams—Bells Burn, the Kershope, Liddel and Esk. After following the last named for 1 m. it cuts across country due west to the Sark, which it follows to the river’s mouth at the head of the Solway Firth. The length of the boundary thus described is 108 m., but in a direct line from the Solway to the North Sea the distance is only 70 m. At the extreme east end a small district of 8 sq. m., consisting of the tract north of the Tweed which is not included in Scotland, forms the “bounds” or “liberties” of Berwick, or the country of the borough and town of Berwick-on-Tweed. At the extreme west between the Sark and Esk as far up the latter as its junction with the Liddel, there was a strip of country, a “No man’s land,” for generations the haunt of outlaws and brigands. This was called the Debatable Land, because the possession of it was a constant source of contention between England and Scotland until its boundaries were finally adjusted in 1552. The English Border counties are Northumberland and Cumberland, the Scottish Berwick, Roxburgh and Dumfries; though historically, and still by usage, the Scottish shires of Selkirk and Peebles have always been classed as Border shires. On the English side the region is watered by the Till, Bowmont, Coquet, Rede and North Tyne; on the Scottish by the Tweed, Whiteadder, Leet, Kale, Jed, Kershope, Liddel, Esk and Sark. Physically there is a marked difference between the country on each side. On the southern it mostly consists of lofty, bleak moorland, affording subsistence for sheep and cattle, and rugged glens and ravines, while on the northern there are many stretches of fertile soil, especially in the valleys and dales, and the landscape is often romantic and beautiful. Railway communication is supplied by the east coast route to Berwick, the Waverley route through Liddesdale, the London & North-Western by Carlisle, the North British branch from Berwick to St Boswells, and the North Eastern lines from Berwick to Kelso, Alnwick to Coldstream, and Newcastle to Carlisle.

At frequent intervals during a period of 1500 years the region was the scene of strife and lawlessness. The Roman road of Watling Street crossed the Cheviots at Brownhartlaw (1664 ft.), close to the camp of Ad Fines, by means of which the warlike Brigantes on the south and the Gadeni and Otadeni on the north were held in check, while another Roman road, the Wheel Causeway, passed into Scotland near the headwaters of the North Tyne and Liddel. (For early history see Lothian; Northumbria; Strathclyde.) In the 12th century were founded the abbeys of Hexham and Alnwick, the priory church of Lindisfarne and the cathedral of Carlisle on the English side, and on the Scottish the abbeys of Jedburgh, Kelso, Melrose and Dryburgh. The deaths of Alexander III. (1286) and Margaret the Maid of Norway (1290), whose right to the throne had been acknowledged, plunged the country into the wars of the succession and independence, and until the union of the crowns in 1603 the borders were frequently disturbed. Berwick and Carlisle were repeatedly assailed, and battles took place at Halidon Hill (1333), Otterburn (1388), Nisbet (1402), Homildon (1402), Piperden (1435), Hedgeley Moor (1464), Flodden (1513), Solway Moss (1542), and Ancrum Moor (1544), in addition to many fights arising out of family feuds and raids fomented by the Armstrongs, Eliots, Grahams, Johnstones, Maxwells and other families, of which the most serious were the encounters at Arkenholme (Langholm) in 1455, the Raid of Reidswire (1575), and the bloody combat at Dryfe Sands (1593). The English expeditions of 1544 and 1545 were exceptionally disastrous, since they involved the destruction of the four Scottish border abbeys, the sack of many towns, and the obliteration of Roxburgh. The only other important conflict belongs to the Covenanters’ time, when the marquess of Montrose was defeated at Philiphaugh in 1645. Partly for the defence of the kingdoms and partly to overawe the freebooters and mosstroopers who were a perpetual menace to the peace until they were suppressed in the 17th century, castles were erected at various points on both sides of the border.

Even during the period when relations between England and Scotland were strained, the sovereigns of both countries recognized it to be their duty to protect property and regulate the lawlessness of the borders. The frontier was divided into the East, Middle and West Marches, each under the control of an English and a Scots warden. The posts were generally filled by eminent and capable men who had to keep the peace, enforce punishment for breach of the law, and take care that neither country encroached on the boundary of the other. The wardens usually conferred once a year on matters of common interest, and as a rule their meetings were conducted in a friendly spirit, though in 1575 a display of temper led to the affair of the Raid of Reidswire. The appointment was not only one of the most important in this quarter of the kingdom, but lucrative as well, part of the fines and forfeits falling to the warden, who was also entitled to ration and forage for his retinue. On the occasion of his first public progress to London, James I. of England attended service in Berwick church (March 27, 1603) “to return thanks for his peaceful entry into his new dominions.” Anxious to blot out all memory of the bitter past, he forbade the use of the word “Borders,” hoping that the designation “Middle Shires” might take its place. Frontier fortresses were also to be dismantled and their garrisons reduced to nominal strength. In course of time this policy had the desired effect, though the expression “Borders” proved too convenient geographically to be dropped, the king’s proposed amendment being in point of fact merely sentimental and, in the relative positions then and now of England and Scotland, meaningless. Some English strongholds, such as Alnwick, Chillingham, Ford and Naworth, have been modernized; others, like Norham, Wark and Warkworth, are picturesque ruins; but most of the Scottish fortresses have been demolished and their sites built over, or are now represented by grass-grown mounds. Another familiar feature in the landscape is the chain of peel towers crossing the country from coast to coast. Many were homes of marauding chiefs, and nearly all were used as beacon-stations to give alarm of foray or invasion. Early in the 18th century the Scottish gipsies found a congenial home on the Roxburghshire side of the Cheviots; and at a later period the Scottish border became notorious for a hundred years as offering hospitality to runaway couples who were clandestinely married at Gretna Green, Coldstream or Lamberton. The toll-house of Lamberton displayed the following intimation—“Ginger-beer sold here and marriages performed on the most reasonable terms.”

Border ballads occupy a distinctive place in English literature. Many of them were rescued from oblivion by Sir Walter Scott, who ransacked the district for materials for his Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, which appeared in 1802 and 1803. Border traditions and folklore, and the picturesque, pathetic and stirring incidents of which the country was so often the scene, appealed strongly to James Hogg (“the Ettrick Shepherd”), John Wilson (“Christopher North”), and John Mackay Wilson (1804-1835), whose Tales of the Borders, published in 1835, long enjoyed popular favour.

Besides the works just mentioned see Sir Herbert Maxwell, History of Dumfries and Galloway (1896); George Ridpath, Border History of England and Scotland (1776); Professor John Veitch, History and Poetry of the Scottish Border (1877); Sir George Douglas, History of the Border Counties (Scots), (1890): W.S. Crockett, The Scott Country (1902).


BORDIGHERA, a town of Liguria, Italy, in the province of Porto Maurizio, 91 m. S.W. of Genoa by rail, and 3 m. E.N.E. of Ventimiglia. Pop. (1901) 4673. It is a favourite winter resort, especially for visitors from England, and is situated in beautiful coast scenery. It has fine gardens, and its flowers and palms are especially famous: the former are largely exported, while the latter serve for the supply of palm branches for St Peter’s at Rome and other churches on Palm Sunday. The new museum contains a unique collection of the flora of the Riviera. From 1682 until the Napoleonic period, Bordighera was the capital of a small republic of the villages of the neighbouring valleys.


BORDONE, PARIS (1495-1570), Venetian painter, was born at Treviso, and entered the bottega of Titian in 1509. Vasari, to whom we are indebted for nearly all the facts of Bordone’s life—later research has not added much to our knowledge—holds that he did not spend many years with Titian and set himself to imitate the manner of Giorgione to the utmost of his power. As a matter of fact, the Giorgionesque traits in Bordone’s earlier works are derived entirely from Titian, whom he imitated so closely that to this day some of his paintings pass under Titian’s name. Crowe and Cavalcaselle and Dr Bode ascribe to Bordone the “Baptism of Christ” in the Capitoline gallery, but Morelli sees in it an early work of Titian. Paris Bordone subsequently executed many important mural paintings in Venice, Treviso and Vicenza, all of which have perished. In 1538 he was invited to France by Francis I., at whose court he painted many portraits, though no trace of them is to be found in French collections, the two portraits at the Louvre being later acquisitions. On his return journey he undertook works of great importance for the Fugger palace at Augsburg, which again have been lost sight of. Bordone’s pictures are of very unequal merit. They have a certain nobility of style, and that golden harmony of colour which he derived from Titian, together with the realistic conception of the human figure and the dignified character of his portraiture. On the other hand, his nudes are a little coarse in form, and the action of his figures is frequently unnatural and affected. A true child of the Renaissance, he also painted a number of religious pictures, numerous mythological scenes, allegories, nymphs, cupids and subjects from Ovid’s fables, but he excelled as a portraitist. His principal surviving work is the “Fisherman and Doge” at the Venice Academy. The National Gallery, London, has a “Daphnis and Chloe” and a portrait of a lady, whilst a “Holy Family” from his brush is at Bridgwater House. Other important works of his are the “Madonna” in the Tadini collection at Lovere, the paintings in the Duomo of Treviso, two mythological pictures at the Villa Borghese and the Doria palace in Rome, the “Chess Players” in Berlin, a very little-known portrait of superb quality in the possession of the landgrave of Hesse at Kronberg, and a “Baptism of Christ” in Philadelphia. Besides these, there are examples of his art in Bergamo, Milan, Genoa, Padua, Siena, Venice, Florence, Munich, Dresden and Vienna.

Beyond some references in general works on Italian painting, very little has been written on Paris Bordone since the days of Vasari. In 1900 the committee of the fourth centenary of Paris Bordone, Treviso, published L. Barlo and G. Biscaro’s Della Vita e delle Opere di Paris Bordone; and the Nuova Antologia (November 16, 1900) contains a sixteen-page paper on Paris Bordone by P.G. Molmenti.

(P. G. K.)


BORE, a high tidal wave rushing up a narrow estuary or tidal river. The bore of the Severn is produced by a tide that rises 18 ft. in an hour and a half. This body of water becomes compressed in the narrowing funnel-shaped estuary, and heaped up into an advancing wave extending from bank to bank. The phenomenon is also particularly well illustrated in the Bay of Fundy. The origin of this word is doubtful, but it is usually referred to a Scandinavian word bāra, a wave, billow. The other name by which the phenomenon is known, “eagre,” is also of unknown origin. There is, of course, no connexion with “bore,” to make a hole by piercing or drilling, which is a common Teutonic word, cf. Ger. bohren, the Indo-European root being seen in Lat. forare, to pierce, Gr. φάρος, plough. For the making of deep holes for shafts, wells, &c., see Boring. The substantival use of this word is generally confined to the circular cavity of objects of tubular shape, particularly of a gun, hence the internal diameter of a gun, its “calibre” (see Gun). A “bore” is also a tiresome, wearying person, particularly one who persistently harps on one subject, in or out of season, whatever interest his audience may take in it. This has generally been taken to be merely a metaphorical use of “bore,” to pierce. The earliest sense, however, in which it is found in English (1766, in certain letters printed in Jesse’s Life of George Selwyn) is that of ennui, and a French origin is suggested. The New English Dictionary conjectures a possible source in Fr. bourrer, to stuff, satiate.


BOREAS, in Greek mythology, a personification of the north wind. He was described as the son of Astraeus and Eos, brother of Hesperus, Notus and Zephyrus. His dwelling-place was on Mount Haemus in Thrace, or at Salmydessus, near the country of the Hyperboreans. He was said to have carried off the beautiful Oreithyia, a daughter of Erechtheus, king of Athens, when he found her leading the dance at a festival, or gathering flowers on the banks of the Ilissus or some other spot in the neighbourhood of Athens. He had before wooed her in vain, and now carried her off to Mount Haemus, where they lived as king and queen of the winds, and had two sons, Zetes and Calaïs, and two daughters, Cleopatra and Chione (Apollodorus iii. 15; Ovid, Metam. vi. 677). For the loss of Oreithyia the Athenians in after times counted on Boreas’s friendliness, and were assured of it when he sent storms which wrecked the Persian fleet at Athos and at Sepias (Herodotus vii. 189). For this they erected to him a sanctuary or altar near the Ilissus, and held a festival (Boreasmos) in his honour. Thurii also, which was a colony of Athens, offered sacrifice to him as Euergetes every year, because he had destroyed the hostile fleet of Dionysius the elder (Aelian, Var. Hist. xii. 61). In works of art Boreas was represented as bearded, powerful, draped against cold, and winged. On the Tower of the Winds at Athens he is figured holding a shell, such as is blown by Tritons. Boreas carrying off Oreithyia is the subject of a beautiful bronze relief in the British Museum, found in the island of Calymna. The same subject occurs frequently on painted Greek vases.


BOREL, PETRUS, whose full name was Pierre Joseph Borel d’Hauterive (1809-1859), French writer, was born at Lyons on the 26th of June 1809. His father had been ruined by taking part in the resistance offered by the Lyonnese royalists against the Convention, and Petrus Borel was educated in Paris to be an architect. He soon abandoned his profession to become one of the most violent partisans of the Romantic movement. His extravagant sentiments were illustrated in various volumes: Rhapsodies (1832), poems; Champavert, contes immoraux (1833); Madame Putiphar (1839), &c. His works did not rescue him from poverty, but through the kindness of Théophile Gautier and Mme de Girardin he obtained a small place in the civil service. He died at Mostaganem in Algeria on the 14th of July 1859.

See Jules Clarétie, Petrus Borel, le Lycanthrope (1865); and Ch. Asselineau, Bibliographie romantique (1872).


BORELLI, GIOVANNI ALFONSO (1608-1679), Italian physiologist and physicist, was born at Naples on the 28th of January 1608. He was appointed professor of mathematics at Messina in 1649 and at Pisa in 1656. In 1667 he returned to Messina, but in 1674 was obliged to retire to Rome, where he lived under the protection of Christina, queen of Sweden, and died on the 31st of December 1679. His best-known work is De motu animalium (Rome, 1680-1681), in which he sought to explain the movements of the animal body on mechanical principles; he thus ranks as the founder of the iatrophysical school. In a letter, Del movimento della cometa apparsa il mese di decembre 1664, published in 1665 under the pseudonym Pier Maria Mutoli, he was the first to suggest the idea of a parabolic path; and another of his astronomical works was Theorica mediceorum planetarum ex causis physicis deducta (Florence, 1666), in which he considered the influence of attraction on the satellites of Jupiter. He also wrote: Della Causa delle Febbri maligni (Pisa, 1658); De Renum usu Judicium (Strassburg, 1664); Euclides Restitutus (Pisa, 1658); Apollonii Pergaei Conicorum libri v., vi. et vii. (Florence, 1661); De vi percussionis (Bologna, 1667); Meteorologia Aetnea (Reggio, 1669); and De motionibus naturalibus a gravitate pendentibus (Bologna, 1670).


BORGÅ (Finnish Porvoo), a seaport in the province of Nyland, grand duchy of Finland, situated at the entrance of the river Borgå into the Gulf of Finland, about 33 m. by rail N.W. of Helsingfors. Pop. (1810) 1693; (1870) 3478; (1904) 5255. It is the seat of a Lutheran bishopric which extends over the provinces of Viborg and St Michel with portions of Tavastehus and Nyland; it possesses a beautiful cathedral, and a high school (where the well-known Finnish poet Runeberg lectured for many years), and is the seat of a court of appeal. The weaving of sail-cloth and the manufacture of tobacco are the principal industries, and the chief articles of trade are wood, butter and furs. Borgå was once a city of great dignity and importance, but the rapid growth of Helsingfors has somewhat eclipsed it. In 1809, when the estates of Finland were summoned to a special diet to decide the future of the country, Borgå was the place of meeting, and it was in the cathedral that the emperor Alexander I. pledged himself as grand duke of Finland to maintain the constitution and liberties of the grand duchy.


BORGHESE, a noble Italian family of Sienese origin, first mentioned in 1238, a member of which, Marcantonio Borghese, settled in Rome and was the father of Camillo Borghese (1550-1620), elected pope under the title of Paul V. (1605). Paul created his nephew prince of Vivero on the 17th of November 1609, and Philip III. of Spain conferred the title of prince of Sulmona on him in 1610. The family took its place among the higher Roman nobility by the marriage of the prince’s son Paolo with Olimpia, heiress of the Aldobrandini family, in 1614. In 1803 Camillo Filippo Ludovico, Prince Borghese (b. 1775), married Pauline, sister of the emperor Napoleon, and widow of General Leclerc. In 1806 he was made duke of Guastalla, and for some years acted as governor of the Piedmontese and Genoese provinces. After the fall of Napoleon he fixed his residence at Florence, where he died in 1832. The Borghese palace at Rome is one of the most magnificent buildings in the city, and contained a splendid gallery of pictures, most of which have been transferred to the Villa Borghese outside the Porto del Popolo, now Villa Umberto I., the property of the Italian government.

See A. von Reumont, Geschichte der Stadt Rom, iii. 605, 609 617, &c.; Almanach de Gotha (Gotha, 1902); J.H. Douglas, The Principal Noble Families of Rome (Rome, 1905).


BORGHESI, BARTOLOMMEO (1781-1860), Italian antiquarian, was born at Savignano, near Rimini, on the 11th of July 1781. He studied at Bologna and Rome. Having weakened his eyesight by the study of documents of the middle ages, he turned his attention to epigraphy and numismatics. At Rome he arranged and catalogued several collections of coins, amongst them those of the Vatican, a task which he undertook for Pius VII. In consequence of the disturbances of 1821, Borghesi retired to San Marino, where he died on the 16th of April 1860. Although mainly an enthusiastic student, he was for some time podestà of the little republic. His monumental work, Nuovi Frammenti dei Fasti Consolari Capitolini (1818-1820), attracted the attention of the learned world as furnishing positive bases for the chronology of Roman history, while his contributions to Italian archaeological journals established his reputation as a numismatist and antiquarian. Before his death, Borghesi conceived the design of publishing a collection of all the Latin inscriptions of the Roman world. The work was taken up by the Academy of Berlin under the auspices of Mommsen, and the result was the Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum. Napoleon III. ordered the publication of a complete edition of the works of Borghesi. This edition, in ten volumes, of which the first appeared in 1862, was not completed until 1897.


BORGIA, CESARE, duke of Valentinois and Romagna (1476-1507) was the son of Pope Alexander VI. by Vanozza dei Cattanei. He was born at Rome while his father was cardinal, and on the latter’s elevation to the papacy (1492) he was created archbishop of Valencia, and a year later cardinal. Cesare was Alexander’s favourite son, and it was for him that the pope’s notorious nepotism was most extensively practised. In the early years of his father’s pontificate he led a profligate life at the Vatican. When Charles VIII. left Rome for the conquest of Naples (January 25, 1495), Cesare accompanied him as a hostage for the pope’s good behaviour, but he escaped at Velletri and returned to Rome. He soon began to give proofs of the violence for which he afterwards became notorious; when in 1497 his brother Giovanni, duke of Gandia, was murdered, the deed was attributed, in all probability with reason, to Cesare. It was suggested that the motive of the murder was the brothers’ rivalry in the affection of Donna Sancha, wife of Giuffrè, the pope’s youngest son, while there were yet darker hints at incestuous relations of Cesare and the duke with their sister Lucrezia. But it is more probable that Cesare, who contemplated exchanging his ecclesiastical dignities for a secular career, regarded his brother’s splendid position with envy, and was determined to enjoy the whole of his father’s favours.

In July 1497 Cesare went to Naples as papal legate and crowned Frederick of Aragon king. Now that the duke of Gandia was dead, the pope needed Cesare to carry out his political schemes, and tried to arrange a wealthy marriage for him. Cesare wished to marry Carlotta, the daughter of the king of Naples, but both she and her father resolutely refused an alliance with “a priest, the bastard of a priest.” In August 1498, Cesare in the consistory asked for the permission of the cardinals and the pope to renounce the priesthood, and the latter granted it “for the good of his soul.” On the 1st of October he set forth for France with a magnificent retinue as papal legate to Louis XII., to bring him the pope’s bull annulling his marriage with Jeanne of France (Louis wished to marry Anne of Brittany). In exchange he received the duchy of Valentinois, as well as military assistance for his own enterprises. He found Carlotta of Naples in France, and having again tried to win her over in vain, he had to content himself with Charlotte d’Albret, sister of the king of Navarre (May 1499). Alexander now contemplated sending Cesare to Romagna to subdue the turbulent local despots, and with the help of the French king carve a principality for himself out of those territories owing nominal allegiance to the pope. Cesare made Cesena his headquarters, and with an army consisting of 300 French lances, 4000 Gascons and Swiss, besides Italian troops, he attacked Imola, which surrendered at once, and then besieged Forli, held by Caterina Sforza (q.v.), the widow of Girolamo Riario. She held out gallantly, but was at last forced to surrender on the 22nd of January 1500; Cesare treated her with consideration, and she ended her days in a convent. The Sforzas having expelled the French from Milan, Cesare returned to Rome in February, his schemes checked for the moment; his father rewarded him for his successes by making him gonfaloniere of the church and conferring many honours on him; he remained in Rome and took part in bull fights and other carnival festivities. In July occurred the murder of the duke of Bisceglie, Lucrezia Borgia’s third husband. He was attacked by assassins on the steps of St Peter’s and badly wounded; attendants carried him to a cardinal’s house, and, fearing poison, he was nursed only by his wife and Sancha, his sister-in-law. Again Cesare was suspected as the instigator of the deed, and in fact he almost admitted it himself. Bisceglie was related to the Neapolitan dynasty, with whose enemies the pope was allied, and he had had a quarrel with Cesare. When it appeared that he was recovering from his wounds, Cesare had him murdered, but not apparently without provocation, for, according to the Venetian ambassador Cappello, the duke had tried to murder Cesare first.

In October 1500 Cesare again set out for the Romagna, on the strength of Venetian friendship, with an army of 10,000 men. Pandolfo Malatesta of Rimini and Giovanni Sforza of Pesaro fled, and those cities opened their gates to Cesare. Faenza held out, for the people were devoted to their lord, Astorre Manfredi, a handsome and virtuous youth of eighteen. Manfredi surrendered in April 1501, on the promise that his life should be spared; but Cesare broke his word, and sent him a prisoner to Rome, where he was afterwards foully outraged and put to death. After taking Castel Bolognese he returned to Rome in June, to take part in the Franco-Spanish intrigues for the partition of Naples. He was now lord of an extensive territory, and the pope created him duke of Romagna. His cruelty, his utter want of scruple, and his good fortune made him a terror to all Italy. His avidity was insatiable and he could brook no opposition; but, unlike his father, he was morose, silent and unsympathetic. His next conquests were Camerino and Urbino, but his power was now greatly shaken by the conspiracy of La Magione (a castle near Perugia where the plotters met). Several of the princes deposed by him, the Orsinis, and some of his own captains, such as Vitellozzo Vitelli (q.v.), Oliverotto da Fermo, and G.P. Baglioni, who had been given estates but feared to lose them, joined forces to conspire against the Borgias. Risings broke out at Urbino and in Romagna, and the papal troops were defeated; Cesare could find no allies, and it seemed as though all Italy was about to turn against the hated family, when the French king promised help, and this was enough to frighten the confederates into coming to terms. Most of them had shown very little political or military skill, and several were ready to betray each other. But Cesare, while trusting no one, proved a match for them all. During his operations in northern Romagna, Vitelli, Oliverotto, Paolo Orsini, and the duke of Gravina, to show their repentance, seized Senigallia, which still held for the duke of Urbino, in his name. Cesare arrived at that town, decoyed the unsuspecting condottieri into his house, had them all arrested, and two of them, Vitelli and Oliverotto, strangled (December 31, 1502).

He was back in Rome early in 1503, and took part in reducing the last rebel Orsinis. He was gathering troops for a new expedition in central Italy in the summer, when both he and his father were simultaneously seized with fever. The pope died on the 18th of August, while Cesare was still incapacitated, and this unfortunate coincidence proved his ruin; it was the one contingency for which he had not provided. On all sides his enemies rose up against him; in Romagna the deposed princes prepared to regain their own, and the Orsinis raised their heads once more in Rome. Cesare’s position was greatly shaken, and when he tried to browbeat the cardinals by means of Don Michelotto and his bravos, they refused to be intimidated; he had to leave Rome in September, trusting that the Spanish cardinals would elect a candidate friendly to his house. At the conclave Francesco Todeschini-Piccolomini was elected as Pius III., and he showed every disposition to be peaceful and respectable, but he was old and in bad health. Cesare’s dominion at once began to fall to pieces; Guidobaldo, duke of Urbino, returned to his duchy with Venetian help; and the lords of Piombino, Rimini and Pesaro soon regained their own; Cesena, defended by a governor faithful to Cesare, alone held out. Pius III. died on the 18th of October 1503, and a new conclave was held. Cesare, who could still count on the Spanish cardinals, wished to prevent the election of Giuliano della Rovere, the enemy of his house, but the latter’s chances were so greatly improved that it was necessary to come to terms with him. On the 1st of November he was elected, and assumed the name of Julius II. He showed no ill-will towards Cesare, but declared that the latter’s territories must be restored to the church, for “we desire the honour of recovering what our predecessors have wrongfully alienated.” Venice hoped to intervene in Romagna and establish her protectorate over the principalities, but this Julius was determined to prevent, and after trying in vain to use Cesare as a means of keeping out the Venetians, he had him arrested. Borgia’s power was now at an end, and he was obliged to surrender all his castles in Romagna save Cesena, Forli and Bettinoro, whose governors refused to accept an order of surrender from a master who was a prisoner. Finally, it was agreed that if Cesare were set at liberty he would surrender the castles; this having been accomplished, he departed for Naples, where the Spaniards were in possession. The Spanish governor, Gonzalo de Cordova, had given him a safe-conduct, and he was meditating fresh plans, when Gonzalo arrested him by the order of Ferdinand of Spain as a disturber of the peace of Italy (May 1504). In August he was sent to Spain, where he remained a prisoner for two years; in November 1506 he made his escape, and fled to the court of his brother-in-law, the king of Navarre, under whom he took service. While besieging the castle of Viana, held by the rebellious count of Lerin, he was killed (March 12, 1507).

Cesare Borgia was a type of the adventurers with which the Italy of the Renaissance swarmed, but he was cleverer and more unscrupulous than his rivals. His methods of conquest were ferocious and treacherous; but once the conquest was made he governed his subjects with firmness and justice, so that his rule was preferred to the anarchy of factions and local despots. But he was certainly not a man of genius, as has long been imagined, and his success was chiefly due to the support of the papacy; once his father was dead his career was at an end, and he could no longer play a prominent part in Italian affairs. His fall proved on how unsound a basis his system had been built up.

The chief authorities for the life of Cesare Borgia are the same as those of Alexander VI., especially M. Creighton’s History of the Papacy, vol. v. (London, 1897); F. Gregorovius’s Geschichte der Stadt Rom, vol. vii. (Stuttgart, 1881); and P. Villari’s Machiavelli (London 1892); also C. Yriarte, César Borgia (Paris, 1889), an admirable piece of writing; Schubert-Soldern, Die Borgia und ihre Zeit (Dresden, 1902), which contains the latest discoveries on the subject; and E. Alvisi, Cesare Borgia, Duca di Romagna (Imola, 1878).

(L. V.*)


BORGIA, FRANCIS (1510-1572), Roman Catholic saint, duke of Gandia, and general of the order of Jesuits, was born at Gandia (Valencia) on the 10th of October 1510, and from boyhood was remarkable for his piety. Educated from his twelfth year at Saragossa under the charge of his uncle the archbishop, he had begun to show a strong inclination towards the monastic life, when his father sent him in 1528 to the court of Charles V. Here he distinguished himself, and on his marriage with Eleanor de Castro, a Portuguese lady of high rank, he was created marquis of Lombay, and was appointed master of the horse to the empress. He accompanied Charles on his African expedition in 1535, and also into Provence in 1536; and on the death of the empress in 1539 he was deputed to convoy the body to the burial-place in Granada. This sad duty confirmed his determination to leave the court, and also, should he survive his consort, to embrace the monastic life. On his return to Toledo, however, new honours were thrust upon him, much against his will; he was made viceroy of Catalonia and commander of the order of St James. At Barcelona, the seat of his government, he lived a life of great austerity, but discharged his official duties with energy and efficiency until 1543, when, having succeeded his father in the dukedom, he at length obtained permission to resign his viceroyalty and to retire to a more congenial mode of life at Gandia. Having already held some correspondence with Ignatius Loyola, he now powerfully encouraged the recently founded order of Jesus. One of his first cares at Gandia was to build a Jesuit college; and on the death of Eleanor in 1546, he resolved to become himself a member of the society. The difficulties arising from political and family circumstances were removed by a papal dispensation, which allowed him, in the interests of his young children, to retain his dignities and worldly possessions for four years after taking the vows. In 1550 he visited Rome, where he was received with every mark of distinction, and where he furnished the means for building the Collegium Romanum. Returning to Spain in the following year, he formally resigned his rank and estate in favour of his eldest son, assumed the Jesuit habit, was ordained priest, and entered upon a life of penance and prayer. At his own earnest request, seconded by Loyola, a proposal that he should be created a cardinal by Julius III. was departed from; and at the command of his superior he employed himself in the work of itinerant preaching. In 1554 he was appointed commissary-general of the order in Spain, Portugal and the Indies, in which capacity he showed great activity, and was successful in founding many new and thriving colleges. In 1556, shortly after Charles V. retired, Borgia had an interview with him, but would not yield to his inducements to transfer his allegiance to the older order of Hieronymites. Some time afterwards Borgia was employed by Charles to conduct negotiations with reference to a project which was to secure for Don Carlos of Spain the Portuguese succession in the event of the death of his cousin Don Sebastian. On the death of Lainez in 1565, Francis Borgia was chosen to succeed him as third general of the Jesuits. In this capacity he showed great zeal and administrative skill; and so great was the progress of the society under his government that he has sometimes been called “its second founder,” The peculiarities which are most characteristic of the order were, however, derived from Loyola and Lainez, rather than from Borgia, whose ideal was a simple monasticism rather than a life of manifold and influential contact with the world. He died at Rome on the 30th of September 1572. He was beatified by Urban VIII. in 1624, and canonized by Clement X. in 1671, his festival being afterwards (1683) fixed by Innocent XI. for the 10th of October.

Several works by St Francis Borgia have been published, the principal of these being a series of Exercises similar to the Exercitia Spiritualia of Loyola, and a treatise Rhetorica Concionandi. The Opera Omnia were published at Brussels in 1675. His life was written by his confessor Pedro de Ribadeneira. See also A. Butler’s Lives of the Saints, and the Breviarium Romanum (second nocturn for October 10).