VOLUME III SLICE IV Basso-relievo to Bedfordshire (continued 10)

BEAUMONT, a city and the county-seat of Jefferson county, Texas, U.S.A., situated on the Neches river, in the E. part of the state, about 28 m. from the Gulf of Mexico and 72 m. N.E. of Galveston. Pop. (1890) 3296; (1900) 9427, of whom 2953 were negroes; (1910, census) 20,640. It is served by the Gulf & Interstate, the Gulf, Colorado & Santa Fé, the Kansas City Southern, the Texas & New Orleans, the Colorado Southern, New Orleans & Pacific, the Beaumont, Sour Lake & Western (from Beaumont to Sour Lake, Tex.), and the (short) Galveston, Beaumont & North-Eastern railways. The Neches river from Beaumont to its mouth has a depth of not less than 19 ft.; from its mouth extends a canal (9 ft. deep, 100 ft. wide, and 12 m. long) which connects with the Port Arthur Canal (180 ft. wide and 25 ft. deep) extending to the sea. Situated in the midst of a region covered with dense forests of pine and cypress, Beaumont is one of the largest lumber centres of the southern states; it is also the centre of a large rice-growing region. The manufactories include rice mills, saw mills, sash, door and blind factories, shingle mills, iron works, oil refineries, broom factories and a dynamite factory. In 1905 the cleaning and polishing of rice was the most important industry, its output being valued at $1,203,123, being nearly twice the value of the product of the rice mills of the city in 1900, 25.9% of the total value of the state’s product of polished and cleaned rice, 46.1% of the value ($2,609,829) of all of Beaumont’s factory products, and about 7.4% of the value of the product of polished and cleaned rice for the whole United States in 1905. After the sinking of oil wells in 1901, Beaumont became one of the principal oil-producing places in the United States; its oil refineries are connected by pipe lines with the surrounding oil fields, and two 6-in. pipe lines extend from Beaumont to Oklahoma. Beaumont was first settled in 1828, and was first chartered as a city in 1899.

BEAUNE, a town of eastern France, capital of an arrondissement in the department of Côte-d’Or, on the Bouzoise, 23 m. S.S.W. of Dijon on the main line of the Paris-Lyon railway. Pop. (1906) 11,668. Beaune lies at the foot of the hills of Côte-d’Or. Portions of its ancient fortifications are still to be seen, but they have been for the most part replaced by a shady promenade which separates the town from its suburbs. The most interesting feature of Beaune is the old hospital of St Esprit, founded in 1443 by Nicolas Rolin, chancellor of Burgundy. Though it is built largely of wood, the fabric is in good preservation. The exterior is simple, but the buildings which surround the main courtyard have high-pitched roofs surmounted by numerous dormer windows with decorated gables, recalling the Flemish style of architecture. In the interior there are several interesting apartments; the chief of these is the ample council chamber with its fine tapestries, where an important wine sale is held annually. The hospital possesses many artistic treasures, among them the mural paintings of the 17th century in the Salle St Hugues and an altar-piece, the Last Judgment, attributed to Roger van der Weyden. The principal church of the town, Notre-Dame, dating mainly from the 12th and 13th centuries, has a fine central tower and a triple portal with handsome wooden doors. In the interior there is some valuable tapestry of the 15th century, and other works of art. Two round towers (15th century) are a survival of the castle of Beaune, dismantled by Henry IV. A belfry of 1403 and several houses of the Renaissance period, some of which are built over ancient wine-cellars, are architecturally notable. There is a statue to the mathematician, G. Monge, born in the town (1746), and a monument to Pierre Joigneaux the politician (d. 1892). Beaune has tribunals of first instance and of commerce, a chamber of commerce, a school of agriculture and viticulture and colleges for girls and boys. It carries on considerable trade in live-stock and cereals and in the vegetables of its market-gardens, and manufactures of casks, corks, white metal, oil, vinegar and machinery for the wine-trade are included among the industries; it is chiefly important for its vineyards and as the centre of the wine-trade of Burgundy.

Beaune was a fortified Roman camp and a stronghold during the middle ages. It was the capital of a separate county which in 1227 was united to the duchy of Burgundy; it then became the first seat of the Burgundian parlement or jours généraux and a ducal residence. On the death of Charles the Bold, it sided with his daughter, Mary of Burgundy, but was besieged and taken by the forces of Louis XI. in 1478. Its rank as commune, conceded to it in 1203, was confirmed by Francis I. in 1521. In the Wars of Religion it at first sided with the League, but afterwards opened its gates to the troops of Henry IV., from whom it received the confirmation of its communal privileges and permission to demolish its fortifications. The revocation of the edict of Nantes struck a severe blow at the cloth and iron industries, which had previously been a source of prosperity to the town. In the 18th century there were no fewer than seven monastic buildings in Beaune, besides a Bernardine abbey, a Carthusian convent and an ecclesiastical college.

BEAUREGARD, MARQUIS DE (c. 1772-?), French adventurer, the son of a poor vinegrower named Leuthraud, was born about 1772. He received the name Beauregard from a nobleman in whose service he was engaged as valet. On the outbreak of the revolution, this nobleman converted all his fortune into gold, and entrusting the bag containing the cash to his valet, fled to the frontier. For security’s sake master and man took different roads, but Beauregard turned back with the money to Paris. By speculations in provisions and military equipments under the Directorate he amassed a considerable fortune, and styling himself the marquis de Beauregard, purchased a splendid mansion and began giving magnificent entertainments. Detected at the height of his success, the impostor was arrested and condemned to four years in irons and to be branded. He soon escaped from prison, and had the audacity to reappear in Paris and start his old life afresh. After a short time, however, he disappeared again, and is supposed to have committed suicide. It is probable that most of the information available about him is a blend of fact and fiction.

BEAUREGARD, PIERRE GUSTAVE TOUTANT (1818-1893), American soldier, was born near New Orleans, Louisiana, on the 28th of May 1818. At the United States military academy he graduated second in his class in July 1838, and was appointed lieutenant of engineers. In the Mexican War he distinguished himself in siege operations at Vera Cruz, and took part in all the battles around Mexico, being wounded at Chapultepec, and receiving the brevets of captain and major. In 1853 he became captain and was in charge of fortification and other engineer works of various points, on the Gulf coast from 1853 to 1860. He had just been appointed superintendent of West Point when the secession of his state brought about his resignation (20th February 1861). As a brigadier-general of the new Confederate army he directed the bombardment of Fort Sumter, S.C. As the commander of the Southern “Army of the Potomac” he opposed McDowell’s advance to Bull Run, and during the battle was second in command under Joseph E. Johnston, who had joined him on the previous evening. He was one of the five full generals appointed in August 1861, and in 1862 was second in command under Sidney Johnston on the Tennessee. After Johnston’s death he directed the battle of Shiloh, subsequent to which he retired to Corinth. This place he defended against the united armies under Halleck, until the end of May 1862, when he retreated in good order to the southward. His health now failing, he was employed in less active work. He defended Charleston against the Union forces from September 1862 to April 1864. In May 1864 he fought a severe and eventually successful battle at Drury’s Bluff against General Butler and the Army of the James. Later in the year he endeavoured to gather troops wherewith to oppose Sherman’s advance from Atlanta, and eventually surrendered with Johnston’s forces in April 1865. After the war he engaged in railway management, became adjutant-general of his state and managed the Louisiana lottery. He declined high commands which were offered to him in the Rumanian and later in the Egyptian armies. General Beauregard died in New Orleans on the 20th of February 1893. He was the author of Principles and Maxims of the Art of War (Charleston, 1863); Report on the Defence of Charleston (Richmond, 1864).

See Alfred Roman, Military Operations of General Beauregard (New York, 1883).

BEAUSOBRE, ISAAC DE (1659-1738), French Protestant divine, was born at Niort on the 8th of March 1659. After studying theology at the Protestant academy of Saumur, he was ordained at the age of twenty-two, becoming pastor at Chatillon-sur-Indre. After the revocation of the edict of Nantes he fled to Rotterdam (November 1685), and in 1686 was appointed chaplain to the princess of Dessau, Henrietta Catherine of Orange. In 1693, on the death of the prince of Dessau, he went to Berlin and became chaplain to the court at Oranienbaum, and in 1695 pastor of the French church at Berlin. He became court preacher, counsellor of the Consistory, director of the Maison française, a hospice for French people, inspector of the French gymnasium and superintendent of all the French churches in Brandenburg. He died on the 5th of June 1738. He had strong sense with profound erudition, was one of the best writers of his time and an excellent preacher.

BEAUVAIS, a town of northern France, capital of the department of Oise, 49 m. N. by W. of Paris, on the Northern railway. Pop. (1906) 17,045. Beauvais lies at the foot of wooded hills on the left bank of the Thérain at its confluence with the Avelon. Its ancient ramparts have been destroyed, and it is now surrounded by boulevards, outside which run branches of the Thérain. In addition, there are spacious promenades in the north-east of the town. Its cathedral of St Pierre, in some respects the most daring achievement of Gothic architecture, consists only of a transept and choir with apse and seven apse-chapels. The vaulting in the interior exceeds 150 ft. in height. The small Romanesque church of the 10th century known as the Basse-Oeuvre occupies the site destined for the nave. Begun in 1247, the work was interrupted in 1284 by the collapse of the vaulting of the choir, in 1573 by the fall of a too ambitious central tower, after which little addition was made. The transept was built from 1500 to 1548. Its façades, especially that on the south, exhibit all the richness of the late Gothic style. The carved wooden doors of both the north and the south portals are masterpieces respectively of Gothic and Renaissance workmanship. The church possesses an elaborate astronomical clock (1866) and tapestries of the 15th and 17th centuries; but its chief artistic treasures are stained glass windows of the 13th, 14th and 16th centuries, the most beautiful of them from the hand of the Renaissance artist, Engrand Le Prince, a native of Beauvais. To him also is due some of the stained glass in St. Étienne, the second church of the town, and an interesting example of the transition stage between the Romanesque and Gothic styles.

In the Place de l’Hôtel de Ville and in the old streets near the cathedral there are several houses dating from the 12th to the 16th centuries. The hôtel de ville, close to which stands the statue of Jeanne Hachette (see below), was built in 1752. The episcopal palace, now used as a court-house, was built in the 16th century, partly upon the Gallo-Roman fortifications. The industry of Beauvais comprises, besides the state manufacture of tapestry, which dates from 1664, the manufacture of various kinds of cotton and woollen goods, brushes, toys, boots and shoes, and bricks and tiles. Market-gardening flourishes in the vicinity and an extensive trade is carried on in grain and wine.

The town is the seat of a bishop, a prefect and a court of assizes; it has tribunals of first instance and of commerce, together with a chamber of commerce, a branch of the Bank of France, a higher ecclesiastical seminary, a lycée and training colleges.

Beauvais was known to the Romans as Caesaromagus, and took its present name from the Gallic tribe of the Bellovaci, whose capital it was. In the 9th century it became a countship, which about 1013 passed to the bishops of Beauvais, who ultimately became peers of France. In 1346 the town had to defend itself against the English, who again besieged it in 1433. The siege which it suffered in 1472 at the hands of the duke of Burgundy was rendered famous by the heroism of the women, under the leadership of Jeanne Hachette, whose memory is still celebrated by a procession on the 14th of October (the feast of Ste Angadrème), in which the women take precedence of the men.

See V. Lhuillier, Choses du vieux Beauvais et au Beauvaisis (1896).

BEAUVILLIER, the name of a very ancient French family belonging to the country around Chartres, members of which are found filling court offices from the 15th century onward. For Charles de Beauvillier, gentleman of the chamber to the king, governor and bailli of Blois, the estate of Saint Aignan was created a countship in 1537. François de Beauvillier, comte de Saint Aignan, after having been through the campaigns in Germany (1634-1635), Franche-Comté (1636), and Flanders (1637), was sent to the Bastille in consequence of his having lost the battle of Thionville in 1640. In reward for his devotion to the court party during the Fronde he obtained many signal favours, and Saint Aignan was raised to a duchy in the peerage of France (duché-pairie) in 1663. His son Paul, called the duc de Beauvillier, was several times ambassador to England; he became chief of the council of finance in 1685, governor of the dukes of Burgundy, Anjou and Berri from 1689 to 1693, minister of state in 1691, and grandee of Spain in 1701. He married a daughter of Colbert. Paul Hippolyte de Beauvillier, comte de Montrésor, afterwards duc de Saint Aignan, was ambassador at Madrid from 1715 to 1718 and at Rome in 1731, and a member of the council of regency in 1719.

(M. P.*)

BEAUVOIR, ROGER DE, the nom de plume of Eugène Auguste Roger de Bully (1806-1866), French writer, who was born on the 8th of November 1806 in Paris. He was the son and nephew of public officials who did not approve his literary inclinations, and it was at their request that he wrote over the signature of Roger de Beauvoir. A good-looking young fellow, of independent means, an indefatigable viveur, he astonished all Paris with his ostentatious luxury and his adventures, while his romantic novels gave him a more serious if not durable reputation. Among the best of them are L’Écolier de Cluny ou le Sophisme (1832), which is said to have furnished Alexandre Dumas and Theodore Gaillardet (1808-1882) with the idea of the Tour de Nesle, and Le Chevalier de Saint Georges (1840). He had married in 1847 an actress, Eléonore Léocadie Doze (1822-1859), from whom he obtained a judicial separation a year or two later after a long and notorious trial, following which his mother-in-law got him imprisoned for three months and fined 500 francs for a satirical poem, Mon Procès (1849). Ruined by extravagance and tied to his chair by gout, he spent the last years of his life in retirement, and died in Paris on the 27th of August 1866.

BEAUX, CECILIA (1863- ), American portrait-painter, was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, where she became a pupil of William Sartain. But her real art training was obtained in Paris, where she started in the atelier Julian and had the coaching of painters like Robert-Fleury, Bouguereau and Dagnan Bouveret. In 1890 she exhibited at the Paris Exposition. Returning to Philadelphia, Miss Beaux obtained in 1893 the gold medal of the Philadelphia Art Club, and also the Dodge prize at the New York National Academy, and later various other distinctions. She became a member of the National Academy of Design, New York, in 1902. Among her portraits are those of Bishop-Coadjutor Greer (exhibited at the Salon in 1896); Mrs Roosevelt and her daughter; and Mrs Larz Anderson. Her “Dorothea and Francesca,” and “Ernesta and her Little Brother,” are good examples of her skill in painting children.

BEAVER,1 the largest European aquatic representative of the mammalian order Rodentia (q.v.), easily recognized by its large trowel-like, scaly tail, which is expanded in the horizontal direction. The true beaver (Castor fiber) is a native of Europe and northern Asia, but it is represented in North America by a closely-allied species (C. canadensis), chiefly distinguished by the form of the nasal bones of the skull. Beavers are nearly allied to the squirrels (Sciuridae), agreeing in certain structural peculiarities of the lower jaw and skull. In the Sciuridae the two main bones (tibia and fibula) of the lower half of the leg are quite separate, the tail is round and hairy, and the habits are arboreal and terrestrial. In the beavers or Castoridae these bones are in close contact at their lower ends, the tail is depressed, expanded and scaly, and the habits are aquatic. Beavers have webbed hind-feet, and the claw of the second hind-toe double. In length beavers—European and American—measure about 2 ft. exclusive of the tail, which is about 10 in. long. They are covered with a fur to which they owe their chief commercial value; this consists of two kinds of hair—the one close-set, silky and of a greyish colour, the other much coarser and longer, and of a reddish brown. Beavers are essentially aquatic in their habits, never travelling by land unless driven by necessity. Formerly common in England, the European beaver has not only been exterminated there, but likewise in most of the countries of the continent, although a few remain on the Elbe, the Rhone and in parts of Scandinavia. The American species is also greatly diminished in numbers from incessant pursuit for the sake of its valuable fur. Beavers are sociable anirrals, living in streams, where, so as to render the water of sufficient depth, they build dams of mud and of the stems and boughs of trees felled by their powerful incisor teeth. In the neighbourhood they make their “lodges,” which are roomy chambers, with the entrance beneath the water. The mud is plastered down by the fore-feet, and not, as often supposed, by the tail, which is employed solely as a rudder. They are mainly nocturnal, and subsist chiefly on bark and twigs or the roots of water plants. The dam differs in shape according to the nature of particular localities. Where the water has little motion it is almost straight; where the current is considerable it is curved, with its convexity towards the stream. The materials made use of are driftwood, green willows, birch and poplars; also mud and stones intermixed in such a manner as contributes to the strength of the dam, but there is no particular method observed, except that the work is carried on with a regular sweep, and that all the parts are made of equal strength. “In places,” writes Hearne, “which have been long frequented by beavers undisturbed, their dams, by frequent repairing, become a solid bank, capable of resisting a great force both of ice and water; and as the willow, poplar and birch generally take root and shoot up, they by degrees form a kind of regular planted hedge, which I have seen in some places so tall that birds have built their nests among the branches.” Their houses are formed of the same materials as the dams, with little order or regularity of structure, and seldom contain more than four old, and six or eight young beavers. It not unfrequently happens that some of the larger houses have one or more partitions, but these are only posts of the main building left by the builders to support the roof, for the apartments have usually no communication with each other except by water. The beavers carry the mud and stones with their fore-paws and the timber between their teeth. They always work in the night and with great expedition. They cover their houses late every autumn with fresh mud, which, freezing when the frost sets in, becomes almost as hard as stone, so that neither wolves nor wolverines can disturb their repose.

The favourite food of the American beaver is the water-lily (Nuphar luteum), which bears a resemblance to a cabbage-stalk, and grows at the bottom of lakes and rivers. Beavers also gnaw the bark of birch, poplar and willow trees; but during the summer a more varied herbage, with the addition of berries, is consumed. When the ice breaks up in spring they always leave their embankments, and rove about until a little before the fall of the leaf, when they return to their old habitations, and lay in their winter stock of wood. They seldom begin to repair the houses till the frost sets in, and never finish the outer coating till the cold becomes severe. When they erect a new habitation they fell the wood early in summer, but seldom begin building till towards the end of August.

The flesh of the American beaver is eaten by the Indians, and when roasted in the skin is esteemed a delicacy and is said to taste like pork. Castoreum is a substance contained in two pear-shaped pouches situated near the organs of reproduction, of a bitter taste and slightly foetid odour, at one time largely employed as a medicine, but now used only in perfumery.

Fossil remains of beavers are found in the peat and other superficial deposits of England and the continent of Europe; while in the Pleistocene formations of England and Siberia occur remains of a giant extinct beaver, Trogontherium cuvieri, representing a genus by itself.

For an account of beavers in Norway see R. Collett, in the Bergens Museum Aarbog for 1897. See also R.T. Martin, Castorologia, a History and Traditions of the Canadian Beaver (London, 1892).

(R. L.*)

1 The word is descended from the Aryan name of the animal, cf. Sanskrit babhrús, brown, the great ichneumon, Lat. fiber, Ger. Biber, Swed. bafver, Russ. bobr’; the root bhru has given “brown,” and, through Romanic, “bronze” and “burnish.”

BEAVER (from Fr. bavière, a child’s bib, from bave, saliva), the lower part of the helmet, fixed to the neck-armour to protect the face and cheeks; properly it moved upwards, as the visor moved down, but the word is sometimes used to include the visor. The right form of the word, “baver,” has been altered from a confusion with “beaver,” a hat made of beaver-fur or a silk imitation, also, in slang, called a “castor,” from the zoological name of the beaver family.

BEAVER DAM, a city of Dodge county, Wisconsin, U.S.A., situated in the S.E. part of the state, 63 m. N.W. of Milwaukee, on Beaver Lake, which is 9 m. long and 3 m. wide. Pop. (1890) 4222; (1900) 5128, of whom 1023 were foreign-born; (1905) 5615; (1910) 6758. Most of the population is of German descent. Beaver Dam is served by the Chicago, Milwaukee & St Paul railway. The city is a summer resort, has a public library, and is the seat of Wayland Academy (1855, Baptist), a co-educational preparatory school affiliated with the university of Chicago. Beaver Dam is situated in the midst of a fine farming country; it has a good water-power derived from Beaver Lake, and among its manufactures are woollen and cotton goods, malleable iron, foundry products, gasolene engines, agricultural implements, stoves and beer. The city was first settled about 1841, and was incorporated in 1856.

BEAVER FALLS, a borough of Beaver county, Pennsylvania, U.S.A., on Beaver river, about 3½ m. from its confluence with the Ohio, opposite New Brighton, and about 32 m. N.W. of Pittsburg. Pop. (1890) 9735; (1900) 10,054, of whom 1554 were foreign-born; (1910), census, 12,191. The borough is served by the Pennsylvania and the Pittsburg & Lake Erie railways. It is built for the most part on a plateau about 50 ft. above the river, hemmed in on either side by hills that rise abruptly, especially on the W., to a height of more than 200 ft. Bituminous coal, natural gas and oil abound in the vicinity; the river provides excellent water-power; the borough is a manufacturing centre of considerable importance, its products including iron and steel bridges, boilers, steam drills, carriages, saws, files, axes, shovels, wire netting, stoves, glass-ware, scales, chemicals, pottery, cork, decorative tile, bricks and typewriters. In 1905 the city’s factory products were valued at $4,907,536. Geneva College (Reformed Presbyterian, co-educational), established in 1849 at Northwood, Logan county, Ohio, was removed in 1880 to the borough of College Hill (pop. in 1900, 899), 1 m. N. of Beaver Falls; it has a preparatory and a collegiate department, departments of music, oratory and art, and a physical department, and in 1907-1908 had 13 instructors and 235 students. Beaver Falls was first settled in 1801; was laid out as a town and named Brighton in 1806; received its present name a few years later; and in 1868 was incorporated as a borough.

BEAWAR, or Nayanagar, a town of British India, the administrative headquarters of Merwara district in Ajmere-Merwara. It is 33 m. from Ajmere. Pop. (1901) 21,928. It is an important centre of trade, especially in raw cotton, and has cotton presses and the Krishna cotton mills. It was founded by Colonel Dixon in 1835.

BEBEL, FERDINAND AUGUST (1840- ), German socialist, was born at Cologne on the 22nd of February 1840; he became a turner and worked at Leipzig. Here he took a prominent part in the workmen’s movement and in the association of working men which had been founded under the influence of Schultz-Delitzsch; at first an opponent of socialism, he came under the influence of Liebknecht, and after 1865 he was a confirmed advocate of socialism. With Liebknecht he belonged to the branch of the socialists which was in close correspondence with Karl Marx and the International, and refused to accept the leadership of Schweitzer, who had attempted to carry on the work after Lassalle’s death. He was one of those who supported a vote of want of confidence in Schweitzer at the Eisenach conference in 1867, from which his party was generally known as “the Eisenacher.” In this year he was elected a member of the North German Reichstag for a Saxon constituency, and, with an interval from 1881 to 1883, remained a member of the German parliament. His great organizing talent and oratorical power quickly made him one of the leaders of the socialists and their chief spokesman in parliament. In 1870 he and Liebknecht were the only members who did not vote the extraordinary subsidy required for the war with France; the followers of Lassalle, on the other hand, voted for the government proposals. He was the only Socialist who was elected to the Reichstag in 1871, but he used his position to protest against the annexation of Alsace-Lorraine and to express his full sympathy with the Paris Commune. Bismarck afterwards said that this speech of Bebel’s was a “ray of light,” showing him that Socialism was an enemy to be fought against and crushed; and in 1872 Bebel was accused in Brunswick of preparation for high treason, and condemned to two years’ imprisonment in a fortress, and, for insulting the German emperor, to nine months’ ordinary imprisonment. After his release he helped to organize, at the congress of Gotha, the united party of Social Democrats, which had been formed during his imprisonment. After the passing of the Socialist Law he continued to show great activity in the debates of the Reichstag, and was also elected a member of the Saxon parliament; when the state of siege was proclaimed in Leipzig he was expelled from the city, and in 1886 condemned to nine months’ imprisonment for taking part in a secret society. Although the rules of the Social Democratic party do not recognize a leader or president, Bebel subsequently became by far the most influential member of the party. In the party meetings of 1890 and 1891 his policy was severely attacked, first by the extremists, the “young” Socialists from Berlin, who wished to abandon parliamentary action; against these Bebel won a complete victory. On the other side he was involved in a quarrel with Volmar and his school, who desired to put aside from immediate consideration the complete attainment of the Socialist ideal, and proposed that the party should aim at bringing about, not a complete overthrow of society, but a gradual amelioration. This conflict of tendencies continued, and Bebel came to be regarded as the chief exponent of the traditional views of the orthodox Marxist party. He was exposed to some natural ridicule on the ground that the “Kladderadatsch,” which he often spoke of as imminent, failed to make its appearance. On the other hand, though a strong opponent of militarism, he publicly stated that foreign nations attacking Germany must not expect the help or the neutrality of the Social Democrats. His book, Die Frau und der Socialismus (1893), which went through many editions and contained an attack on the institution of marriage, identified him with the most extreme forms of Socialism.

See also Mehring, Geschichte der deutschen Social-Demokratie (Stuttgart, 1898); Reports of the Annual Meetings of the Social Democratic Party, Berlin Vorwarts Publishing Company (from 1890); B. Russell, German Social-Democracy (London, 1897).

(J. W. He.)

BECCAFICO (Ital. for “fig-pecker”), a small migratory bird of the warbler (Sylviidae) family, which frequents fig-trees and vineyards, and, when fattened, is considered a great delicacy.

BECCAFUMI, DOMENICO DI PACE (1486-1551), Italian painter, of the school of Siena. In the early days of the Tuscan republics Siena had been in artistic genius, and almost in political importance, the rival of Florence. But after the great plague in 1348 the city declined; and though her population always comprised an immense number of skilled artists and artificers, yet her school did not share in the general progress of Italy in the 15th century. About the year 1500, indeed, Siena had no native artists of the first importance; and her public and private commissions were often given to natives of other cities. But after the uncovering of the works of Raphael and Michelangelo at Rome in 1508, all the schools of Italy were stirred with the desire of imitating them. Among these accomplished men who now, without the mind and inspiration of Raphael or Michelangelo, mastered a great deal of their manner, and initiated the decadence of Italian art, several of the most accomplished arose in the school of Siena. Among these was Domenico, the son of a peasant, one Giacomo di Pace, who worked on the estate of a well-to-do citizen named Lorenzo Beccafumi. Seeing some signs of a talent for drawing in his labourer’s son, Lorenzo Beccafumi took the boy into his service and presently adopted him, causing him to learn painting from masters of the city. Known afterwards as Domenico Beccafumi, or earlier as Il Mecarino (from the name of a poor artist with whom he studied), the peasant’s son soon gave proof of extraordinary industry and talent. In 1509 he went to Rome and steeped himself in the manner of the great men who had just done their first work in the Vatican. Returning to his native town, Beccafumi quickly gained employment and a reputation second only to Sodoma. He painted a vast number both of religious pieces for churches and of mythological decorations for private patrons. But the work by which he will longest be remembered is that which he did for the celebrated pavement of the cathedral of Siena. For a hundred and fifty years the best artists of the state had been engaged laying down this pavement with vast designs in commesso work,—white marble, that is, engraved with the outlines of the subject in black, and having borders inlaid with rich patterns in many colours. From the year 1517 to 1544 Beccafumi was engaged in continuing this pavement. He made very ingenious improvements in the technical processes employed, and laid down multitudinous scenes from the stories of Ahab and Elijah, of Melchisedec, of Abraham and of Moses. These are not so interesting as the simpler work of the earlier schools, but are much more celebrated and more jealously guarded. Such was their fame that the agents of Charles I. of England, at the time when he was collecting for Whitehall, went to Siena expressly to try and purchase the original cartoons. But their owner would not part with them, and they are now in the Siena Academy and elsewhere. The subjects have been engraved on wood, by the hand, as it seems, of Beccafumi himself, who at one time or another essayed almost every branch of fine art. He made a triumphal arch and an immense mechanical horse for the procession of the emperor Charles V. on his entry into Siena. In his later days, being a solitary liver and continually at work, he is said to have accelerated his death by over-exertion upon the processes of bronze-casting.

BECCARIA, GIOVANNI BATTISTA (1716-1781), Italian physicist, was born at Mondovi on the 3rd of October 1716, and entered the religious order of the Pious Schools in 1732. He became professor of experimental physics, first at Palermo and then at Rome, and was appointed to a similar situation at Turin in 1748. He was afterwards made tutor to the young princes de Chablais and de Carignan, and continued to reside principally at Turin during the remainder of his life. In May 1755 he was elected a fellow of the Royal Society of London, and published several papers on electrical subjects in the Phil. Trans. He died at Turin on the 27th of May 1781. Beccaria did much, in the way both of experiment and exposition, to spread a knowledge of the electrical researches of Franklin and others. His principal work was the treatise Dell’ Elettricismo Naturale ed Artificiale (1753), which was translated into English in 1776.

BECCARIA-BONESANA, CESARE, Marchese de (1735-1794), Italian publicist, was born at Milan on the 15th of March 1735. He was educated in the Jesuit college at Parma, and showed at first a great aptitude for mathematics. The study of Montesquieu seems to have directed his attention towards economic questions; and his first publication (1762) was a tract on the derangement of the currency in the Milanese states, with a proposal for its remedy. Shortly after, in conjunction with his friends the Verris, he formed a literary society, and began to publish a small journal, in imitation of the Spectator, called Il Caffè. In 1764 he published his brief but justly celebrated treatise Dei Delitti e delle Pene (“On Crimes and Punishments”). The weighty reasonings of this work were expounded with all the additional force of a clear and animated style. It pointed out distinctly and temperately the grounds of the right of punishment, and from these principles deduced certain propositions as to the nature and amount of punishment which should be inflicted for any crime. The book had a surprising success. Within eighteen months it passed through six editions. It was translated into French by Morellet in 1766, and published with an anonymous commentary by Voltaire. An English translation appeared in 1768 and it was translated into several other languages. Many of the reforms in the penal codes of the principal European nations are traceable to Beccaria’s treatise. In November 1768 he was appointed to the chair of law and economy, which had been founded expressly for him at the Palatine college of Milan. His lectures on political economy, which are based on strict utilitarian principles, are in marked accordance with the theories of the English school of economists. They are published in the collection of Italian writers on political economy (Scrittori Classici Italiani di Economia politico., vols. xi. and xii.). In 1771 Beccaria was made a member of the supreme economic council; and in 1791 he was appointed one of the board for the reform of the judicial code. In this post his labours were of very great value. He died at Milan on the 28th of November 1794.

BECCLES, a market town and municipal borough, in the Lowestoft parliamentary division of Suffolk, England; on the right bank of the river Waveney, 109 m. N.E. from London by the Great Eastern railway. Pop. (1901) 6898. It has a pleasant, well-wooded site overlooking the flat lands bordering the Waveney. The church of St Michael, wholly Perpendicular, is a fine example of the style, having an ornate south porch of two storeys and a detached bell tower. There are a grammar school (1712), and boys’ school and free school on the foundation of Sir John Leman (1631). Rose Hall, in the vicinity, is a moated manor of brick, of the 16th century. Printing works, malting, brick and tile, and agricultural implement works are the chief industries. Beccles was incorporated in 1584. It is governed by a mayor, 4 aldermen and 12 councillors. Area, 2017 acres.

BECERRA, GASPAR (1520-1570), Spanish painter and sculptor, was born at Baéza in Andalusia. He studied at Rome, it is said under Michelangelo, and assisted Vasari in painting the hall of the Concelleria. He also contributed to the anatomical plates of Valverde. After his return to Spain he was extensively employed by Philip II., and decorated many of the rooms in the palace at Madrid with frescoes. He also painted altar-pieces for several of the churches, most of which have been destroyed. His fame as a sculptor almost surpassed that as a painter. His best work was a magnificent figure of the Virgin, which was destroyed during the French war. He became court painter at Madrid in 1563, and played a prominent part in the establishment of the fine arts in Spain.

BÊCHE-DE-MER (sometimes explained as “sea-spade,” from the shape of the prepared article, but more probably from the Port, bicho, a worm or grub), or Trepang (Malay, tripang), an important food luxury among the Chinese and other Eastern peoples, connected with the production of which considerable trade exists in the Eastern Archipelago and the coasts of New Guinea, and also in California. It consists of several species of echinoderms, generally referred to the genus Holothuria, especially H. edulis. The creatures, which exist on coral reefs, have bodies from 6 to 15 in. long, shaped like a cucumber, hence their name of “sea-cucumbers.” The skin is sometimes covered with spicules or prickles, and sometimes quite smooth, and with or without “teats” or ambulacral feet disposed in rows. Five varieties are recognized in the commerce of the Pacific Islands, the finest of which is the “brown with teats.” The large black come next in value, followed by the small black, the red-bellied and the white. They are used in the gelatinous soups which form an important article of food in China. They are prepared for use by being boiled for about twenty minutes, and then dried first in the sun and afterwards over a fire, so that they are slightly smoked.

BECHER, JOHANN JOACHIM (1635-1682), German chemist, physician, scholar and adventurer, was born at Spires in 1635. His father, a Lutheran minister, died while he was yet a child, leaving a widow and three children. The mother married again; the stepfather spent the tiny patrimony of the children; and at the age of thirteen Becher found himself responsible not only for his own support but also for that of his mother and brothers. He learned and practised several small handicrafts, and devoting his nights to study of the most miscellaneous description earned a pittance by teaching. In 1654, at the age of nineteen, he published an edition of Salzthal’s Tractatus de lapide trismegisto; his Metallurgia followed in 1660; and the next year appeared his Character pro notitia linguarum universali, in which he gives 10,000 words for use as a universal language. In 1663 he published his Oedipum Chemicum and a book on animals, plants and minerals (Thier- Kräuter- und Bergbuch). At the same time he was full of schemes, practical and unpractical. He negotiated with the elector palatine for the establishment of factories at Mannheim; suggested to the elector of Bavaria the creation of German colonies in Guiana and the West Indies; and brought down upon himself the wrath of the Munich merchants by planning a government monopoly of cloth manufacture and of trade. He fled from Munich, but found a ready welcome elsewhere. In 1666 he was appointed teacher of medicine at Mainz and body-physician to the archbishop-elector; and the same year he was made councillor of commerce (Commerzienrat) at Vienna, where he had gained the powerful support of Albrecht, Count Zinzendorf, prime minister and grand chamberlain of the emperor Leopold I. Sent by the emperor on a mission to Holland, he there wrote in ten days his Methodus Didactica, which was followed by the Regeln der Christlichen Bundesgenossenschaft and the Politischer Discurs vom Auj- und Abblühen der Städte. In 1669 he published his Physica subterranea, and the same year was engaged with the count of Hanau in a scheme for settling a large territory between the Orinoco and the Amazon. Meanwhile he had been appointed physician to the elector of Bavaria; but in 1670 he was again in Vienna advising on the establishment of a silk factory and propounding schemes for a great company to trade with the Low Countries and for a canal to unite the Rhine and Danube. He then returned to Bavaria, and his absence bringing him into ill odour at Vienna, he complained of the incompetence of the council of commerce and dedicated a tract on trade (Commercien-Tractat) to the emperor Leopold. His Psychosophia followed, and “An invitation to a psychological community” (Einladung zu einer psychologischen Societät), for the realization of which Duke Gustavus Adolphus of Mecklenburg-Gustrow (d. 1695) offered him in 1674 a site in his duchy. The plan came to nothing, and next year Becher was again busy at Vienna, trying to transmute Danube sand into gold, and writing his Theses chemicae veritatem transmutationis metallorum evincentes. For some reason he incurred the disfavour of Zinzendorf and fled to Holland, where with the aid of the government he continued his experiments. Pursued even there by the resentment of his former patron, he crossed to England, whence he visited the mines of Scotland at the request of Prince Rupert. He afterwards went for the same purpose to Cornwall, where he spent a year. At the beginning of 1680 he presented a paper to the Royal Society, De nova temporis dimetiendi ratione et accurata horologiorum constructione, in which he attempted to deprive Huygens of the honour of applying the pendulum to the measurement of time. The views of Becher on the composition of substances mark little essential advance on those of the two preceding centuries, and the three elements or principles of salt, mercury and sulphur reappear as the vitrifiable, the mercurial and the combustible earths. When a substance was burnt he supposed that the last of these, the terra pinguis, was liberated, and this conception is the basis on which G.E. Stahl founded his doctrine of “phlogiston.” His ideas and experiments on the nature of minerals and other substances are voluminously set forth in his Physica Subterranea (Frankfort, 1669); an edition of this, published at Leipzig in 1703, contains two supplements (Experimentum chymicum novum and Demonstratio Philosophica), proving the truth and possibility of transmuting metals, Experimentum novum ac curiosum de minera arenaria perpetua, the paper on timepieces already mentioned and also Specimen Becherianum, a summary of his doctrines by Stahl, who in the preface acknowledges indebtedness to him in the words Becheriana sunt quae profero. At Falmouth he wrote his Laboratorium portabile and at Truro the Alphabetum minerale. In 1682 he returned to London, where he wrote the Chemischer Glückshafen oder grosse Concordanz und Collection van 1500 Processen and died in October of the same year.

BECHUANA, a South African people, forming a branch of the great Bantu-Negroid family. They occupy not only Bechuanaland, to which they have given their name, and Basutoland, but are the most numerous native race in the Orange River Colony and in the western and northern districts of the Transvaal. It seems certain that they reached their present home later than the Zulu-Xosa [Kaffir] peoples who came down the east coast of the continent, but it is probable that they started on their southward journey before the latter. It would appear that the forerunners of the movement were the Bakalahari and Balala, who were subsequently reduced to the condition of serfs by the later arrivals, and who by intermingling to a certain extent with the aborigines gave rise to the “Kalahari Bushmen” (see Kalahari Desert). The Bechuana family may be classed in two great divisions, the western or Bechuana proper, and the eastern or Basuto. The Bechuana proper consist of a large number of tribes, whose early history is extremely confused and involved owing to continual inter-tribal wars and migrations, during which many tribes were practically annihilated. Further confusion was produced by subsequent marauding expeditions by the coast “Kaffirs.” An ingenious attempt to disentangle the highly complicated tribal movements which took place in the early 19th century may be found in Stow’s Native Races of South Africa. One migration of particular interest calls for mention. In the early part of the 19th century a number of Basuto, led by the chief Sebituane, crossed the Zambezi near the Victoria Falls, and, under the name Makololo, established a supremacy over the Barotse and neighbouring tribes on the upper portion of the river, imposing their language on the conquered peoples. After the death of Sekeletu, Sebituane’s successor, the vassal tribes arose and exterminated their conquerors. Only a few escaped, whom Sekeletu had sent with David Livingstone to the coast. These established themselves to the south of Lake Nyasa, where they are still to be found. Sesuto speech, however, still prevails in Barotseland. The chief Bechuana tribes were the Batlapin and Barolong (the last including the Baratlou, Bataung, Barapulana and Baseleka), together with the great Bakuena or Bakone people (including the Bahurutsi, Batlaru, Bamangwato, Batauana, Bangwaketse and Bakuena). The clans representing the southern Bakuena were in comparatively recent times welded together to form the Basuto nation, of which the founder was the chief Moshesh (see Basutoland). The Basuto have been not only influenced in certain cultural details (e.g. the form of their huts) by the neighbouring Zulu-Xosa [Kaffir] peoples, but have moreover received an infusion of their blood which has improved their physique. They are good riders and make considerable use of their horses in war and the chase.

The Bechuana, though not so tall as Kaffirs, average 5 ft. 6 in. in stature; they are of slender build and their musculature is but moderately developed except where a Kaffir strain is found. Their skin is of a reddish-brown or bronze colour, and their features are fairly regular, though in all cases coarser than those of Europeans. One of their chief peculiarities lies in the fact that each tribe respects (usually) a particular animal, which the members of the tribe may not eat, and the killing of which, if necessary, must be accompanied by profuse apologies and followed by subsequent purification. Many of the tribes take their name from their siboko, as the animal in question is called; e.g. the Batlapin, “they of the fish”; Bakuena, “they of the crocodile.” The siboko of the Barolong, who as a tribe are accomplished smiths, is not an animal but the metal iron; other tribes have adopted as their particular emblem respectively the sun, rain, dew, &c. Certain ceremonies are performed in honour of the tribal emblem, hence an inquiry as to the tribe of an individual is put in the form “What do you dance?” In certain tribes the old and feeble and the sickly children were killed, and albinos and the deaf and dumb exposed; those born blind were strangled, and if a mother died in childbirth the infant was buried alive in the same grave. With the extension of British authority these practices were prohibited. Circumcision is universally practised, though there is no fixed age for it. It is performed at puberty, when the boys are secluded for a period in the bush. The operation is accompanied by whipping and even tortures. Girls at puberty must undergo trials of endurance, e.g. the holding of a bar of heated iron without crying out. The Bechuana inhabit, for the most part, towns of considerable size, containing from 5000 to 40,000. Politically they live under a tribal despotism limited by a council of elders, the chief seldom exercising his individual authority independently, though the extent of his power naturally depends on his personality. They have their public assemblies, but only when circumstances, chiefly in reference to war, require. These are generally characterized by great freedom of speech, and there is no interruption of the speaker. The chief generally closes the meeting with a long speech, referring to the subjects which each speaker has either supported or condemned, not forgetting to clear his own character of any imputation. These public assemblies are now, except in Basutoland, of very rare occurrence. The clothing of the men consists of a leather bandage; the women wear a skin apron, reaching to the knee, under which is a fringed girdle. Skin cloaks (kaross) are worn by both sexes, with the difference that the male garment is distinguished by a collar. The hair is kept short for the most part; women shave the head, leaving a tuft on the crown which is plastered with fat and earth, and adorned with beads. Beads are worn, and various bracelets of iron, copper and brass.

The Bechuana are mainly an agricultural people, the Bangwaketse and Bakuena excelling as cultivators. Cattle they possess, but these are used chiefly for the purpose of purchasing wives, especially among the Basuto. At the same time they are excellent craftsmen, and show no little skill in smelting and working iron and copper and the preparation of hides and pottery vessels. The most efficient smiths are the Barolong and Bamangwato (the latter were spared by the Matabele chief Umsilikazi on this account); the Bangwaketse excel as potters; the Barolong as wood carvers, and the Bakuena as hut builders. The huts, with the exception of those of the Basuto who have adopted the Kaffir model, are cylindrical, with clay-plastered walls and a conical roof of thatch. In spite of the constant tribal feuds dating from the beginning of the 19th century, the Bechuana cannot be classed as a warlike people, especially when they are compared with the Zulu. Their weapons consist of the throwing assegai, usually barbed, axes, daggers in carved sheaths, and, occasionally, bows and arrows, the last sometimes poisoned. Hide shields of a peculiar shape, resembling a depressed hour-glass, are found except among the Basuto, who use a somewhat different pattern. Hunting usually takes the form of great drives organized in concert, and the game is driven by means of converging fences to a large pitfall or series of pits. Their religious beliefs are very vague; they appear to recognize a somewhat indeterminate spirit of, mainly, evil tendencies, called Morimo. The plural form of this word, Barimo, is used of the manes of dead ancestors, to whom a varying amount of reverence is paid. There is universal belief in charms and witchcraft, and divination by means of dice is common. Witchdoctors, who are supposed to counteract evil magic, play a not insignificant part, and the magician who claims the power of making rain occupies a very important position, as might be expected among an agricultural people inhabiting a country where droughts are not infrequent. They have a great dread of anything connected with death; when an old man is on the point of expiring, a net is thrown over him, and he is dragged from his hut by a hole in the wall, if possible before life is extinct. The dead are buried in a sitting position with their faces to the north, in which direction lies their ancestral home. Under the influence of missionaries, however, large numbers of the Bechuana have become Christianized, and many of the customs mentioned are no longer practised.

Polygamy is the rule, but, except in the case of chiefs, is not found to the same extent as among the Zulu-Xosa [Kaffirs]. The woman is purchased from her father, chiefly by means of cattle, though among the western Bechuana other articles are included, many of which become the property of the girl herself. The wives live in separate huts, and the first is given priority over those purchased subsequently. Chastity after marriage is the rule, and adultery and rape are severely punished, as offences against property. Cannibalism is found, but is rare and confined to certain tribes.

The Bechuana language, which belongs to the Bantu linguistic family, is copious, with but few slight dialectic differences, and is free from the Hottentot elements found in the Kaffir and Zulu tongues. The richness of the language may be judged from the fact that, though only oral until reduced to writing by the missionaries, it has sufficed for the translation of the whole Bible.

Bibliography.—G.W. Stow, The Native Races of South Africa (London, 1905); Gustav Fritsch, Die Eingeborenen Sud-Afrikas (Breslau, 1872); Robert Moffat, Missionary Labours and Scenes in Southern Africa (1842); David Livingstone, Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa (London, 1857); J.C. MacGregor, Basuto Traditions (Cape Town, 1905).

(T. A. J.)

BECHUANALAND (a name given from its inhabitants, the Bechuana, q.v.), a country of British South Africa occupying the central part of the vast tableland which stretches north to the Zambezi. It is bounded S. by the Orange river, N.E. and E. by Matabeleland, the Transvaal and Orange River Colony, and W. and N. by German South-West Africa. Bechuanaland geographically and ethnically enjoys almost complete unity, but politically it is divided as follows:—

I. British Bechuanaland, since 1895 an integral part of Cape Colony. Area, 51,424 sq. m. Pop. (1904) 84,210, of whom 9276 were whites.

II. The Bechuanaland Protectorate, the northern part of the country, governed on the lines of a British crown colony. Area (estimated), 225,000 sq. m. Pop. (1904) 120,776, of whom Europeans numbered 1004. The natives, in addition to the Bechuana tribes, include some thousands of Bushmen (Masarwa). Administratively attached to the protectorate is the Tati concession, which covers 2500 sq. m. and forms geographically the south-west corner of Matabeleland.

The Griqualand West province of Cape Colony belongs also geographically to Bechuanaland, and except in the Kimberley diamond mines region is still largely inhabited by Bechuana. (See Griqualand.)

Physical Features.—The average height of the tableland of which Bechuanaland consists is nearly 4000 ft. The surface is hilly and undulating with a general slope to the west, where the level falls in considerable areas to little over 2000 ft. A large part of the country is covered with grass or shrub, chiefly acacia. There is very little forest land. The western region, the Kalahari Desert (q.v.), is mainly arid, with a sandy soil, and is covered in part by dense bush. In the northern region are large marshy depressions, in which the water is often salt. The best known of these depressions, Ngami (q.v.), lies to the north-west and is the central point of an inland water system apparently in process of drying up. To the north-east and connected with Ngami by the Botletle river, is the great Makari-Kari salt pan, which also drains a vast extent of territory, receiving in the rainy season a large volume of water. The marsh then becomes a great lake, the water surface stretching beyond the horizon, while in the dry season a mirage is often seen. The permanent marsh land covers a region 60 m. from south to north and from 30 to 60 m. east to west. In the south the rivers, such as the Molopo and the Kuruman, drain towards the Orange. Other streams are tributaries of the Limpopo, which for some distance is the frontier between Bechuanaland and the Transvaal.

The rivers of Bechuanaland are, with few exceptions, intermittent or lose themselves in the desert. It is evident, however, from the extent of the beds of these streams and of others now permanently dry, and from remains of ancient forests, that at a former period the country must have been abundantly watered. From the many cattle-folds and walls of defence scattered over the country, and ruins of ancient settlements, it is also evident that at that period stone-dykes were very common. The increasing dryness of the land is partly, perhaps largely, attributable to the cutting down of timber trees both by natives and by whites, and to the custom of annually burning the grass, which is destructive to young wood.

Climate.—The climate is healthy and bracing, except in the lower valleys along the river banks and in the marsh land, where malarial fever is prevalent. Though in great part within the tropics, the heat is counteracted by the dryness of the air. Throughout the year the nights are cool and refreshing; in winter the cold at night is intense. In the western regions the rainfall does not exceed 10 in. in the year; in the east the average rainfall is 26 in. and in places as much as 30 in. The rainy season is the summer months, November to April, but the rains are irregular, and, from the causes already indicated, the rainfall is steadily declining. From December to February violent thunder and hail storms are experienced. In the whiter or dry season there are occasional heavy dust storms.

Geology.—The greater part of Bechuanaland is covered with superficial deposits consisting of the sands of the desert regions of the Kalahari and the alluvium and saliferous marls of the Okavango basin. The oldest rocks, granites, gneisses and schistose sandstones, the Ngami series, rise to the surface in the east and south-east and doubtless immediately underlie much of the sand areas. A sandstone found in the neighbourhood of Palapye is considered to be the equivalent of the Waterberg formation of the Transvaal. The Karroo formation and associate dolerites (Loalemandelstein) occur in the same region. A deposit of sinter and a calcareous sandstone, known as the Kalahari Kalk, considered by Dr Passarge to be of Miocene age, overlies a sandstone and curious breccia (Botletle Schnichten). These deposits are held by Passarge to indicate Tertiary desert conditions, to which the basin of the Zambezi is slowly reverting.

Fauna.—Until towards the close of the 19th century Bechuanaland abounded in big game, and the Kalahari is still the home of the lion, leopard, hyena, jackal, elephant, hippopotamus, rhinoceros, buffalo, antelope of many species, ostrich and even the giraffe. Venomous reptiles, e.g. puff-adders and cobras, are met with, enormous frogs are common, and walking and flying locusts, mosquitoes, white ants, flying beetles, scorpions, spiders and tarantulas are very numerous. The crocodile is found in some of the rivers. Many of the rivers are well stocked with fish. In those containing water in the rainy season only, the fish preserve life when the bed is dry by burrowing deeply in the ooze before it hardens. The principal fish are the baba or cat-fish (clarias sp.) and the yellow-fish, both of which attain considerable size. Bustards (the great kori and the koorhaan) are common.

Flora.—In the eastern district are stretches of grass land, both sweet and sour veld. In the “bush” are found tufts of tall coarse grass with the space between bare or covered with herbaceous creepers or water-bearing tubers. A common creeper is one bearing a small scarlet cucumber, and a species of watermelon called tsoma is also abundant. Of the melon and cucumber there are both bitter and sweet varieties. Besides the grass and the creepers the bush is made up of berry-yielding bushes (some of the bushes being rich in aromatic resinous matter), the wait-a-bit thorn and white thorned mimosa. The indigo and cotton plants grow wild. Among the rare big trees—found chiefly in the north-east—are baobab and palmyra and certain fruit trees, one bearing a pink plum. There are remains of ancient forests consisting of wild olive trees and the camel thorn, near which grows the ngotuane, a plant with a profusion of fine, strongly scented yellow flowers.

Chief Towns.—The chief town in southern Bechuanaland, i.e. the part incorporated in Cape Colony, is Mafeking (q.v.), near the headwaters of the Molopo river. It is the headquarters of the Barolong tribe, and although within the Cape border is the seat of the administration of the protectorate. Vryburg (pop., 1904, 2985), founded by Boer filibusters in 1882, and Taungs, are towns on the railway between Kimberley and Mafeking. Taungs has some 22,000 inhabitants, being the chief kraal of the Batlapin tribe. About 7 m. south of Vryburg, at Tiger Kloof, is an Industrial Training Institute for natives founded in 1904 by the London Missionary Society. Upington (2508) on the north bank of the Orange, an agricultural centre, is the chief town in Gordonia, the western division of southern Bechuanaland. Kuruman (q.v.) is a native town near the source of the Kuruman river, 85 m. south-west of Vryburg. It has been the scene of missionary labours since the early years of the 19th century. North of Mafeking on the railway to Bulawayo are the small towns of Gaberones and Francistown. The last named is the chief township in the Tati concession, the centre of a gold-mining region, and the most important white settlement in the protectorate. Besides these places there are five or six large native towns, each the headquarters of a distinct tribe. The most important is Serowe, with over 20,000 inhabitants, the capital of the Bamangwato, founded by the chief Khama in 1903. It is about 250 m. north-north-east of Mafeking, and took the place of the abandoned capital Palapye, which in its turn had succeeded Shoshong. The chief centre in the western Kalahari is Lehututu.

Agriculture and Trade.—The soil is very fertile, and if properly irrigated would yield abundant harvests. Unirrigated land laid under wheat by the natives is said to yield twelve bushels an acre. Cereals are grown in many of the river valleys. Maize and millet are the chief crops. The wealth of the Bechuana consists principally in their cattle, which they tend with great care, showing a shrewd discrimination in the choice of pasture suited to oxen, sheep and goats. Water can usually be obtained all the year round by sinking wells from 20 to 30 ft. deep. The “sweet veld” is specially suitable to cattle, and the finer shorter grass which succeeds it affords pasturage for sheep.

Gold mines are worked in the Tati district, the first discoveries having been made there in 1864. There are gold-bearing quartz reefs at Madibi, near Mafeking, where mining began in 1906. Diamonds have been found near Vryburg. The existence of coal near Palapye about 60 ft. below the surface has been proved. The coal, however, is not mined, and much of the destruction of timber in southern Bechuanaland was caused by the demand for fuel for Kimberley. Copper ore has been found near Francistown.

Formerly there was a trade in ostrich feathers and ivory; but this has ceased, and the chief trade has since consisted in supplying the natives with European goods in exchange for cattle, hides, the skins and horns of game, firewood and fencing poles, and in forwarding goods north and south. The protectorate is a member of the South African Customs Union. The value of the goods imported into the protectorate in 1906 was £118,322; the value of the exports was £77,736. The sale of spirits to natives is forbidden.

Communications.—As the great highway from Cape Colony to the north, Bechuanaland has been described as the “Suez canal of South Africa.” The trunk railway from Cape Town to the Victoria Falls traverses the eastern edge of Bechuanaland throughout its length. The railway enters the country at Fourteen Streams, 695 m. from Cape Town, and at Ramaquabane, 584 m. farther north, crosses into Rhodesia. The old trade route to Bulawayo, which skirts the eastern edge of the Kalahari, is now rarely used. Wagon tracks lead to Ngami, 320 m. N.W. from Palapye Road Station, and to all the settlements. From the scarcity of water on the main routes through the Kalahari these roads are known as “the thirsts”; along some of them wells have been sunk by the administration.

Government.—The protectorate is administered by a resident commissioner, responsible to the high commissioner for South Africa. Legislation is enacted by proclamations in the name of the high commissioner. Order is maintained by a small force of semi-military police recruited in Basutoland and officered by Europeans. Revenue is obtained mostly from customs and a hut tax, while the chief items of expenditure have been the police force and a subsidy of £20,000 per annum towards the cost of the railway, a liability which terminated in the year 1908. The average annual revenue for the five years ending the 31st of March 1906 was £30,074; the average annual expenditure during the same period was £80,114. There is no public debt, the annual deficiency being made good by a grant-in-aid from the imperial exchequer. The tribal organization of the Bechuana is maintained, and native laws and customs, with certain modifications, are upheld.

History.—Bechuanaland was visited by Europeans towards the close of the 18th century. The generally peaceful disposition of the tribes rendered the opening up of the country comparatively easy. The first regular expedition to Missionary work. penetrate far inland was in 1801-1802, when John (afterwards Sir John) Truter, of the Cape judicial bench, and William Somerville—an army physician and afterwards husband of Mary Somerville—were sent to the Bechuana tribes to buy cattle. The London Missionary Society established stations in what is now Griqualand West in 1803, and in 1818 the station of Kuruman, in Bechuanaland proper, was founded. In the meantime M.H.K. Lichtenstein (1804) and W.J. Burchell (1811-1812), both distinguished naturalists, and other explorers, had made familiar the general characteristics of the southern part of the country. The Rev. John Campbell, one of the founders of the Bible Society, also travelled in southern Bechuanaland and the adjoining districts in 1812-1814 and 1819-1821, adding considerably to the knowledge of the river systems. About 1817 Mosilikatze, the founder of the Matabele nation, fleeing from the wrath of Chaka, the Zulu king, began his career of conquest, during which he ravaged a great part of Bechuanaland and enrolled large numbers of Bechuana in his armies. Eventually the Matabele settled to the north-east in the country which afterwards bore their name. In 1821 Robert Moffat arrived at Kuruman as agent of the London Missionary Society, and made it his headquarters for fifty years. Largely as the result of the work of Moffat (who reduced the Bechuana tongue to writing), and of other missionaries, the Bechuana advanced notably in civilization. The arrival of David Livingstone in 1841 marked the beginning of the systematic exploration of the northern regions. His travels, and those of C.J. Andersson (1853-1858) and others, covered almost every part of the country hitherto unknown. In 1864 Karl Mauch discovered gold in the Tati district.

At the time of the first contact of the Bechuana with white men the Cape government was the only civilized authority in South Africa; and from this cause, and the circumstance that the missionaries who lived among and exercised Boer encroachment. great influence over them were of British nationality, the connexion between Bechuanaland and the Cape became close. As early as 1836 an act was passed extending the jurisdiction of the Cape courts in certain cases as far north as 25° S.—a limit which included the southern part of Bechuanaland. Although under strong British influence the country was nevertheless ruled by its own chiefs, among whom the best-known in the middle of the 19th century were Montsioa, chief of the Barolong, and Sechele, chief of the Bakwena and the friend of Livingstone. At this period the Transvaal Boers were in a very unsettled state, and those living in the western districts showed a marked inclination to encroach upon the lands of the Bechuana. In 1852 Great Britain by the Sand river convention acknowledged the independence of the Transvaal. Save the Vaal river no frontier was indicated, and “boasting,” writes Livingstone in his Missionary Travels, “that the English had given up all the blacks into their power ... they (the Boers) assaulted the Bakwains” (Bakwena).

With this event the political history of Bechuanaland may be said to have begun. Not only was Sechele attacked at his capital Kolobeng, and the European stores and Livingstone’s house there looted, but the Boers stopped a trader named M‘Cabe from going northward. Again to quote Livingstone, “The Boers resolved to shut up the interior and I determined to open the country.” In 1858 the Boers told the missionaries that they must not go north without their (the Boers’) consent. Moffat complained to Sir George Grey, the governor of Cape Colony, through whose intervention the molestation by Transvaal Boers of British subjects in their passage through Bechuanaland was stopped. At a later date (1865) the Boers tried to raise taxes from the Barolong, but without success, a commando sent against them in 1868 being driven off by Montsioa’s brother Molema. This led to a protest (in 1870) from Montsioa, which he lodged with a landdrost at Potchefstroom in the Transvaal, threatening to submit the matter to the British high commissioner if any further attempt at taxation were made on the part of the Boers. The Boers then resorted to cajolery, and at a meeting held in August 1870, at which President Pretorius and Paul Kruger represented the Transvaal, invited the Barolong to join their territories with that of the republic, in order to save them from becoming British. Montsioa’s reply was short: “No one ever spanned-in an ass with an ox in one yoke.” In the following year the claims of the Boers, the Barolong, and other tribes were submitted to the arbitration of R.W. Keate, lieutenant-governor of Natal, and his award placed Montsioa’s territory outside the limits of the Transvaal. This attempt of the Boers to gain possession of Bechuanaland having failed, T.F. Burgers, the president of the Transvaal in 1872, endeavoured to replace Montsioa as chief of the Barolong by Moshette, whom he declared to be the rightful ruler and paramount chief of that people. The attacks of the Boers at length became so unbearable that Montsioa in 1874 made a request to the British authorities to be taken under their protection. In formulating this appeal he declared that when the Boers were at war with Mosilikatze, chief of the Matabele, he had aided them on the solemn understanding that they were to respect his boundaries. This promise they had broken. Khama, chief of the Bamangwato in northern Bechuanaland, wrote in August 1876 to Sir Henry Barkly making an appeal similar to that sent by the Barolong. The letter contained the following significant passages:

“I write to you, Sir Henry, in order that your queen may preserve for me my country, it being in her hands. The Boers are coming into it, and I do not like them.” “Their actions are cruel among us black people. We are like money, they sell us and our children.” “I ask Her Majesty to defend me, as she defends all her people. There are three things which distress me very much—war, selling people, and drink. All these things I shall find in the Boers, and it is these things which destroy people to make an end of them in the country. The custom of the Boers has always been to cause people to be sold, and to-day they are still selling people.”

The statements of Khama in this letter do not appear to have been exaggerated. The testimony of Livingstone confirms them, and even a Dutch clergyman, writing in 1869, described the system of apprenticeship of natives which obtained among the Boers “as slavery in the fullest sense of the word.” These representations on the part of the Barolong, and the Bamangwato under Khama, supported by the representations of Cape politicians, led in 1878 to the military occupation of southern Bechuanaland by a British force under Colonel (afterwards General Sir Charles) Warren. A small police force continued to occupy the district until April 1881, but, ignoring the wishes of the Bechuana and the recommendations of Sir Bartle Frere (then high commissioner), the home government refused to take the country under British protection. On the withdrawal of the police, southern Bechuanaland fell into a state of anarchy, nor did the fixing (on paper) of the frontier between it and the Transvaal by the Pretoria convention of August 1881 have any beneficial effect. There was fighting between Montsioa and Moshette, while Massow, a Batlapin chief, invited the aid of the Boers against Mankoroane, who claimed to be paramount chief of the Batlapin. The Transvaal War of that date offered opportunities to the freebooting Boers of the west which were not to be lost. At this time the British, wearied of South African troubles, were disinclined to respond to native appeals for help. Stellaland and Goshen. Consequently the Boers proceeded without let or hindrance with their conquest and annexation of territory. In 1882 they set up the republic of Stellaland, with Vryburg as its capital, and forthwith proceeded to set up the republic of Goshen, farther north, in spite of the protests of Montsioa, and established a small town called Rooi Grond as capital. They then summoned Montsioa to quit the territory. The efforts of the British authorities at this period (1882-1883) to bring about a satisfactory settlement were feeble and futile, and fighting continued until peace was made entirely on Boer lines. The Transvaal government was to have supreme power, and to be the final arbiter in case of future quarrels arising among the native chiefs. This agreement, arrived at without any reference to the British government, was a breach of the Pretoria convention, and led to an intimation on the part of Great Britain that she could not recognize the new republics. In South Africa, as well as in England, strong feeling was aroused by this act of aggression. Unless steps were taken at once, the whole of Bechuanaland might be permanently lost, while German territory on the west might readily be extended to join with that of the Boers. In the London convention of February 1884, conceded by Lord Derby in response to the overtures of Boer delegates, the Transvaal boundaries were again defined, part of eastern Bechuanaland being included in Boer territory. In spite of the convention the Boers remained in Stellaland and Goshen—which were west of the new Transvaal frontier, and in April 1884 the Rev. John Mackenzie, who had succeeded Livingstone, was sent to the country to arrange matters. He found very little difficulty in negotiating with the various Bechuana chiefs, but with the Boers he was not so successful. In Goshen the Boers defied his authority, while in Stellaland only a half-hearted acceptance of it was given. At the instance of the new Cape government, formed in May and under control of the Afrikander Bond, Mackenzie, who was accused of being too “pro-Bechuana” and who had been refused the help of any armed force, was recalled on the 30th of July by the high commissioner, Sir Hercules Robinson. In his place Cecil Rhodes, then leader of the Opposition in the Cape parliament, was sent to Bechuanaland.

Rhodes’s mission was attended with great difficulty. British prestige after the disastrous Boer War of 1881 was at a very low ebb, and he realized that he could not count on any active help from the imperial or colonial authorities. Rhodes’s Mission. He adopted a tone of conciliation, and decided that the Stellaland republic should remain under a sort of British suzerainty. But in Goshen the Boers would let him do nothing. Commandant P.J. Joubert, after meeting him at Rooi Grond, entered the country and attacked Montsioa. Rhodes then left under protest, declaring that the Boers were making war against Great Britain. The Boers now (10th of September) proclaimed the country under Transvaal protection. This was a breach of the London convention, and President Kruger explained that the steps had been taken in the “interests of humanity.” Warren expedition. Indignant protest in Cape Town and throughout South Africa, as well as England, led to the despatch in October 1884 of the Warren expedition, which was sent out by the British government to remove the filibusters, to bring about peace in the country, and to hold it until further measures were decided upon. Before Sir Charles Warren reached Africa, Sir Thomas Upington, the Cape premier, and Sir Gordon Sprigg, the treasurer-general, went to Bechuanaland and arranged a “settlement” which would have left the Boer filibusters in possession, but the imperial government refused to take notice of this “settlement.” Public opinion throughout Great Britain was too strong to be ignored. The limit of concessions to the Boers had been reached, and Sir Charles Warren’s force—4000 strong—had reached the Vaal river in January 1885. On the 22nd of January Kruger met Warren at the Modder river, and endeavoured to stop him from proceeding farther, saying that he would be responsible for keeping order in the country. Warren, however, continued his march, and without firing a shot broke up the republics of Stellaland and Goshen. Bechuanaland was formally taken under British protection (30th of September 1885), and the sphere of British influence was declared to extend N. to 22° S. and W. to 20° E. (which last-mentioned line marks the eastern limit of German South-West Africa).

The natives cheerfully accepted this new departure in British policy, and from this time forward Khama’s country was known as the British protectorate of Bechuanaland. That portion lying to the south of the Molopo river was described as British Bechuanaland, and was constituted a crown colony. In 1891 British protectorate. the northern frontier of the protectorate was extended to its present boundaries, and the whole of it placed under the administration of a resident commissioner, a protest being made at the time by the British South Africa Company on the ground that the protectorate was included in the sphere of their charter. Under the able administration (1885-1895) of Sir Sidney Shippard (q.v.) peace was maintained among the natives, who have shown great loyalty to British rule.

The history of the country shows how much has been due to the efforts of men like Livingstone, Mackenzie and Rhodes. It is quite clear that had they not represented the true state of affairs to the authorities the whole of this territory would have gradually been absorbed by the Boers, until they had effected a union with the Germans on the west. The great road to the north would thus have been effectually shut against trade and British colonization. With regard to the precise effect of missionary influence upon the natives, opinion will always remain divided. But Livingstone, who was not only a missionary but also an enlightened traveller, stated that a considerable amount of benefit had been conferred upon the native races by missionary teaching. Livingstone was a great advocate of the prohibition of alcohol among the natives, and that policy was always adhered to by Khama.

In 1891 the South African Customs Union was extended to British Bechuanaland, and in 1895 the country was annexed to Cape Colony. At the same time it was provisionally arranged that the Bechuanaland protectorate should pass under the administration of the British South Africa Company (see Rhodesia). Khama and two other Bechuana chiefs came to England and protested against this arrangement. The result was that their territories and those of other petty chiefs lying to the north of the Molopo were made native reserves, into which the importation of alcohol was forbidden. A British resident officer was to be appointed to each of the reserves. A stipulation, however, was made with these chiefs that a strip of country sufficient for the purposes of a railway to Matabeleland should be conceded to the Chartered Company. In December 1895 the occurrence of the Jameson Raid, which started from these territories, prevented the completion of negotiations, and the administration of the protectorate remained in the hands of the imperial government. The administration, besides fostering the scanty material resources of the country, aids the missionaries in their endeavours to raise the Bechuanas in the scale of civilization. The results are full of encouragement. The natives proved staunch to the British connexion during the war of 1899-1902, and Khama and other chiefs gave help by providing transport. Anxiety was caused on the western frontier during the German campaigns against the Hottentots and Herero (1903-1908), many natives seeking refuge in the protectorate. A dispute concerning the chieftainship of the Batawana in the Ngami district threatened trouble in 1906, but was brought to a peaceful issue. The Bechuana were entirely unaffected by the Kaffir rebellion in Natal.

Bibliography.—Of early works the most valuable are David Livingstone, Missionary Travels in South Africa (London, 1857); Robert Moffat, Missionary Labours and Scenes in Southern Africa (London, 1842); J. Campbell, Travels in South Africa (London, 1815), Travels ... a Second Journey ... (2 vols., London, 1822); and A.A. Anderson, Twenty-five Years in a Waggon in the Gold Regions of Africa, vol. i. (London, 1887). See also J.D. Hepburn, Twenty Years in Khama’s Country (London, 1895); S. Passarge’s Die Kalahari (Berlin, 1904) deals chiefly with geological and allied questions; John Mackenzie’s Austral Africa, Losing it or Ruling it (London, 1887); John Mackenzie, a biography by W.D. Mackenzie (London, 1902); and the article “Bechuanaland” by Sir S. Shippard in British Africa (London, 1899), give the story of the beginnings of British rule in the protectorate. Of larger works dealing incidentally with Bechuanaland consult G.M. Theal’s History of South Africa; E.A. Pratt’s Leading Points in South African History (London, 1900); and Cecil Rhodes, His Political Life and Speeches, by Vindex (London, 1900). See also the Statistical Register, Cape of Good Hope, issued yearly at Cape Town, and the Annual Report, Bechuanaland Protectorate, issued by the Colonial Office, London.

(F. R. C.; A. P. H.)

BECK, CHRISTIAN DANIEL (1757-1832), German philologist, historian, theologian and antiquarian, one of the most learned men of his time, was born at Leipzig on the 22nd of January 1757. He studied at Leipzig University, where he was appointed (1785) professor of Greek and Latin literature. This post he resigned in 1819 in order to take up the professorship of history, but resumed it in 1825. He also had the management of the university library, was director of the institute for the deaf and dumb, and filled many educational and municipal offices. In 1784 he founded a philological society, which grew into a philological seminary, superintended by him until his death. In 1808 he was made a Hofrath by the king of Saxony, and in 1820 a knight of the civil order of merit. His philological lectures, in which grammar and criticism were subordinated to history, were largely attended by hearers from all parts of Germany. He died at Leipzig on the 13th of December 1832. He edited a number of classical authors: Pedo Albinovanus (1783), Pindar and the Scholia (1792-1795), Aristophanes (with others, 1794, &c.), Euripides (1778-1788), Apollonius Rhodius (1797), Demosthenes De Pace (1799), Plato (1813-1819), Cicero (1795-1807), Titus Calpurnius Siculus (1803). He translated Ferguson’s Fall of the Roman Republic and Goldsmith’s History of Greece, and added two volumes to Bauer’s Thucydides. He also wrote on theological and historical subjects, and edited philological and bibliographical journals. He possessed a large and valuable library of 24,000 volumes.

See Nobbe, Vita C.D. Beckii (1837); and G. Hermann, Opuscula, v. 312.

BECK (or Beek), DAVID (1621-1656), Dutch portrait-painter, was born at Arnheim in Guelderland. He was trained by Van Dyck, from whom he acquired the fine manner of pencilling and sweet style of colouring peculiar to that great master. He possessed likewise that freedom of hand and readiness, or rather rapidity of execution, for which Van Dyck was so remarkable, insomuch that when King Charles I. observed the expeditious manner of Beck’s painting, he exclaimed, “Faith! Beck, I believe you could paint riding post.” He was appointed portrait-painter and chamberlain to Queen Christina of Sweden, and he executed portraits of most of the sovereigns of Europe to adorn her gallery. His death at the Hague was suspected of being due to poisoning.

BECK, JAKOB SIGISMUND (1761-1840), German philosopher, was born at Danzig in 1761. Educated at Königsberg, he became professor of philosophy first at Halle (1791-1799) and then at Rostock. He devoted himself to criticism and explanation of the doctrine of Kant, and in 1793 published the Erläuternder Auszug aus Kants kritischen Schriften, which has been widely used as a compendium of Kantian doctrine. He endeavoured to explain away certain of the contradictions which are found in Kant’s system by saying that much of the language is used in a popular sense for the sake of intelligibility, e.g. where Kant attributes to things-in-themselves an existence under the conditions of time, space and causality, and yet holds that they furnish the material of our apprehensions. Beck maintains that the real meaning of Kant’s theory is idealism; that of objects outside the domain of consciousness, knowledge is impossible, and hence that nothing positive remains when we have removed the subjective element. Matter is deduced by the “original synthesis.” Similarly, the idea of God is a symbolical representation of the voice of conscience guiding from within. The value of Beck’s exegesis has been to a great extent overlooked owing to the greater attention given to the work of Fichte. Beside the three volumes of the Erläuternder Auszug, he published the Grundriss der krit. Philosophie (1796), containing an interpretation of the Kantian Kritik in the manner of Salomon Maimon.

See Ueberweg, Grundriss der Gesch. der Philos. der Neuzeit; Dilthey in the Archiv für Geschichte der Philos., vol. ii. (1889), pp. 592-650. For Beck’s letters to Kant, see R. Reicke, Aus Kants Briefwechsel (Königsberg, 1885).

BECKENHAM, an urban district in the Sevenoaks parliamentary division of Kent, England, 10 m. S.S.E. of London by the South Eastern & Chatham railway. Pop. (1881) 13,045; (1901) 26,331. It is a long straggling parish extending from the western tower of the Crystal Palace almost to the south end of Bromley, and contains the residential suburb of Shortlands. Its rapid increase in size in the last decade of the 19th century was owing to the popularity which it attained as a place of residence for London business men. It retains, however, some of its rural character, and has wide thoroughfares and many handsome residences standing in extensive grounds. King William IV.’s Naval Asylum was endowed by Queen Adelaide for 12 widows of naval officers. The church of St George was built in 1866 on the site of an ancient Perpendicular church. Some 16th-century brasses, an altar tomb and a piscina were removed hither from the old church. The tower of the church was completed in 1903, and furnished with two bells in memory of Cecil Rhodes, in addition to the old bells, one of which dates from 1624.

BECKER, HEINRICH (1770-1822), German actor, whose real name was Blumenthal, was born at Berlin. He obtained, while quite a young man, an appointment in the court theatre at Weimar, at that time under Goethe’s auspices. The poet recognized his talent, appointed him stage-manager, entrusted him with several of the leading roles in his dramas and consulted him in all matters connected with the staging of his plays. For many years Becker was the favourite of the Weimar stage, and although he was at his best in comedy, he played, to Goethe’s great satisfaction, Vansen in Egmont, and was also seen to great advantage in the leading parts of several of Schiller’s plays; notably Burleigh in Maria Stuart, Karl Moor in Die Räuber, and Antonio in Torquato Tasso. Becker left Weimar in the spring of 1809, played for a short time at Hamburg (under Schröder) and at Breslau, and then began a wandering life, now joining travelling companies, now playing at provincial theatres. Broken in health and ruined in fortune he returned in 1820 to Weimar, where he was again cordially received by Goethe, who reinstated him at the theatre. After playing for two short years with indifferent success, he died at Weimar in 1822.

Becker was twice married. His first wife, Christiane Luise Amalie Becker (1778-1797), was the daughter of a theatrical manager and dramatic poet, Johann Christian Neumann, and made her first stage appearance in 1787 at Weimar. Here she received some training from Goethe and from Corona Schröter, the singer, and her beauty and charm made her the favourite both of court and public. She married Heinrich Becker in 1793. She died on the 22nd of September 1797. Her last part was that of Euphrosyne in the opera Das Petermännchen, and it is under this name that Goethe immortalized her in a poem which first appeared in Schiller’s Musen Almanack of 1799.

BECKER, WILHELM ADOLF (1796-1846), German classical archaeologist, was born at Dresden. At first destined for a commercial life, he was in 1812 sent to the celebrated school at Pforta. In 1816 he entered the university of Leipzig, where he studied under Beck and Hermann. After holding subordinate posts at Zerbst and Meissen, he was in 1842 appointed professor of archaeology at Leipzig. He died at Meissen on the 30th of September 1846. The works by which Becker is most widely known are the Gallus or Römische Scenen aus der Zeit Augusts (1838, new ed. by Göll, 1880-1882), and the Charicles or Bilder altgriechischer Sitte, (1840, new ed. by Göll, 1877-1878). These two books, which have been translated into English by Frederick Metcalfe, contain a very interesting description of the everyday life of the ancient Greeks and Romans, in the form of a romance. The notes and appendixes are valuable. More important is the great Handbuch der röm. Alterthümer (1843-1868), completed after Becker’s death by Marquardt and Mommsen. Becker’s treatises De Comicis Romanorum Fabulis (1837), De Romae Veteris Muris atque Portis (1842), Die römische Topographie in Rom (1844), and Zur römischen Topographie (1845) may also be mentioned.

BECKET, THOMAS (c. 1118-1170), by his contemporaries more commonly called Thomas of London, English chancellor and archbishop of Canterbury under Henry II., was born about the year 1118 in London. His mother was a native of Caen; his father, who came of a family of small Norman landowners, had been a citizen of Rouen, but migrated to London before the birth of Thomas, and held at one time the dignified office of portreeve, although he ended his life in straitened circumstances. The young Thomas received an excellent education. At the age of ten he was put to school with the canons of Merton priory in Surrey. Later he spent some time in the schools of London, which enjoyed at that time a high reputation, and finally studied theology at Paris. Returning at the age of twenty-two he was compelled, through the misfortunes of his parents, to become a notary in the service of a wealthy kinsman, Osbert Huit Deniers, who was of some importance in London politics. About 1142 a family friend brought Thomas under the notice of Archbishop Theobald, of whose household he at once became an inmate. He accompanied the primate to Rome in 1143, and also to the council of Reims (1148), which Theobald attended in defiance of a prohibition from the king. It appears to have been at some time between the dates of these two journeys that he visited Bologna and Auxerre, and began those studies in the canon law to which he was in no small degree indebted for his subsequent advancement and misfortunes. Although the bent of his mind was legal, he never made himself an expert jurist; but he had the art of turning his knowledge, such as it was, to excellent account. In 1151 he was sent to Rome by the archbishop with instructions to dissuade the Curia from sanctioning the coronation of Stephen’s eldest son Eustace. It is said that Thomas distinguished himself by the ability with which he executed his commission; in any case it gave him a claim on the gratitude of the Angevin party which was not forgotten. In 1154 he was promoted to be archdeacon of Canterbury, after first taking deacon’s orders. In the following year Henry II., at the primate’s recommendation, bestowed on him the important office of chancellor. In this capacity Thomas controlled the issue of royal writs and the distribution of ecclesiastical patronage; but it was more important for his future that he had ample opportunities of exercising his personal fascination upon a prince who was comparatively inexperienced, and thirteen or fourteen years his junior. He became Henry’s bosom friend and was consulted in all affairs of state. It had been the hope of Theobald that Becket’s influence would be exercised to support the extensive privileges which the Church had wrested from Stephen. But the chancellor, although preserving friendly relations with his old patron, subordinated the interests of the Church to those of his new master. Under his administration the Church was severely taxed for the prosecution of Henry’s foreign wars; and the chancellor incurred the reproach “of plunging his sword into the bowels of his mother.” Like Wolsey he identified himself with the military aspirations of his sovereign. It was Thomas who organized the Toulouse campaign of 1159; even in the field he made himself conspicuous by commanding a company of knights, directing the work of devastation, and superintending the conduct of the war after the king had withdrawn his presence from the camp. When there was war with France upon the Norman border, the chancellor acted as Henry’s representative; and on one occasion engaged in single combat and unhorsed a French knight of reputation. Later it fell to his part to arrange the terms of peace with France. He discharged the duties of an envoy with equal magnificence and dexterity; the treaty of May 1160, which put an end to the war, was of his making.

In 1162 he was transferred to a new sphere of action. Henry bestowed on him the see of Canterbury, left vacant by the death of Theobald. The appointment caused some murmurs; since Becket, at the time when it was made, was still a simple deacon. But it had been desired by Theobald as the one means of averting an attack on clerical privileges which had been impending almost since the accession of Henry II.; and the bishops accepted it in silence. Henry on his side looked to find in Becket the archbishop a coadjutor as loyal as Becket the archdeacon; and anticipated that the Church would once more be reduced to that state of dependence in which she had stood during the latter years of Henry I. Becket, however, disappointed all the conflicting expectations excited by his appointment. He did not allow himself to be made the king’s tool; nor on the other hand did he attempt to protect the Church by humouring the king in ordinary matters. He devoted himself to ascetic practices, confined himself to the society of churchmen, and resigned the chancellorship in spite of a papal dispensation (procured by the king) which authorized him to hold that office concurrently with the primacy. By nature a violent partisan, the archbishop now showed himself the uncompromising champion of his order and his see. Hence he was on the worst of terms with the king before a year had elapsed. They came into open conflict at the council of Woodstock (July 1163), when Becket successfully opposed the king’s proposal that a land-tax, known as the sheriff’s aid, which formed part of that official’s salary, should be henceforth paid into the Exchequer. But there were more serious differences in the background. Becket had not shrunk from excommunicating a tenant in chief who had encroached upon the lands of Canterbury, and had protected against the royal courts a clerk named Philip de Brois who was charged with an assault upon a royal officer. These disputes involved questions of principle which had long occupied Henry’s attention, and Becket’s defiant attitude was answered by the famous Constitutions of Clarendon (q.v.), in which the king defined, professedly according to ancient use and custom, the relations of Church and State. Becket and the bishops were required to give these constitutions their approval. Henry’s demands were more defensible in substance than might be supposed from the manner in which he pressed them on the bishops. On the most burning question, that of criminous clerks, he offered a compromise. He was willing that the accused should be tried in the courts Christian provided that the punishment of the guilty were left to the lay power. Becket’s opposition rested upon a casuistic interpretation of the canon law, and an extravagant conception of the dignity attaching to the priesthood; he showed, moreover, a disposition to quibble, to equivocate, and to make promises which he had no intention of fulfilling. His conduct may be excused on the ground that the bishops were subjected to unwarrantable intimidation. But when he renounced his promise to observe the constitutions his conduct was reprobated by the other bishops, although approved by the pope. It was fortunate for Becket’s reputation that Henry punished him for his change of front by a systematic persecution in the forms of law. The archbishop was thus enabled to invoke the pope’s assistance, and to quit the country with some show of dignity.