(S. C.)
BÖTTIGER, KARL AUGUST(1760-1835), German archaeologist, was born at Reichenbach on the 8th of June 1760. He was educated at the school of Pforta, and the university of Leipzig. After holding minor educational posts, he obtained in 1791, through the influence of Herder, the appointment of rector of the gymnasium at Weimar, where he entered into a circle of literary men, including Wieland, Schiller, and Goethe. He published in 1803 a learned work,Sabina, oder Morgenszenen im Putzzimmer einer reichen Römerin, a description of a wealthy Roman lady’s toilette, and a work on ancient art,Griechische Vasengemälde. At the same time he assisted in editing theJournal des Luxus und der Moden, theDeutsche Merkur, and theLondon and Paris. In 1804 he was called to Dresden as superintendent of the studies of the court pages, and received the rank of privy councillor. In 1814 he was made director of studies at the court academy, and inspector of the Museum of Antiquities. He died at Dresden on the 17th of November 1835. His chief works are:—Ideen zur Archäologie der Malerei, i. (1811) (no more published);Kunstmythologie(1811);Vorlesungen und Aufsätze zur Alterthumskunde(1817);Amalthea(1821-1825);Ideen zur Kunstmythologie(1826-1836). TheOpuscula et Carmina Latinawere published separately in 1837; with a collection of his smaller pieces,Kleine Schriften(1837-1838), including a complete list of his works (56 pages). His biography was written by his son Karl Wilhelm Böttiger (1790-1862), for some time professor of history at Erlangen, and author of several valuable histories (History of Germany,History of Saxony,History of Bavaria,Universal History of Biographies).
BOTTLE(Fr. bouteille, from a diminutive of the Lat.butta, a flask; cf. Eng. “butt”), a vessel for containing liquids, generally as opposed to one for drinking from (though this probably is not excluded), and with a narrow neck to facilitate closing and pouring. The first bottles were probably made of the skins of animals. In theIliad(iii. 247) the attendants are represented as bearing wine for use in a bottle made of goat’s skin. The ancient Egyptians used skins for this purpose, and from the language employed by Herodotus (ii. 121), it appears that a bottle was formed by sewing up the skin and leaving the projection of the leg and foot to serve as a vent, which was hence termedποδεών. The aperture was closed with a plug or a string. Skinbottles of various forms occur on Egyptian monuments. The Greeks and Romans also were accustomed to use bottles made of skins; and in the southern parts Europe they are still used for the transport of wine. The first of explicit reference to bottles of skin in Scripture occurs in Joshua (ix. 4), where it is said that the Gibeonites took “old sacks upon their asses, and wine-bottlesold and rent and bound up.” The objection to putting “new wine into old bottles” (Matt. ix. 17) is that the skin, already stretched and weakened by use, is liable to burst under the pressure of the gas from new wine. Skins are still most extensively used throughout western Asia for the conveyance and storage of water. It is an error to represent the bottles of the ancient Hebrews as being made exclusively of skins. In Jer. xix. 1 the prophet speaks of “a potter’s earthen vessel.” The Egyptians (seeEgypt:Art and Archaeology) possessed vases and bottles of hard stone, alabaster, glass, ivory, bone, porcelain, bronze, silver and gold, and also of glazed pottery or common earthenware. In modern times bottles are usually made of glass (q.v.), or occasionally of earthenware. The glass bottle industry has attained enormous dimensions, whether for wine, beer, &c., or mineral waters; and labour-saving machinery for filling the bottles has been introduced, as well as for corking or stoppering, for labelling and for washing them.
BOTTLE-BRUSH PLANTS,a genus of Australian plants, known botanically asCallistemon, and belongiug to the myrtle family (Myrtaceae). They take their name from the resemblance of the head of flowers to a bottle-brush. They are well known in cultivation as greenhouse shrubs; the flower owes its beauty to the numerous long thread-like stamens which far exceed the small petals.Callistemon salignusis a valuable hard wood.
BOTTLENOSE WHALE(Hyperoödon rostratus), a member of the sperm-whale family, which is an inhabitant of the North Atlantic, passing the summer in the Spitzbergen seas and going farther south in winter. It resembles the sperm-whale in possessing a large store of oil in the upper part of the head, which yields spermaceti when refined; on this account, and also for the sake of the blubber, which supplies an oil almost indistinguishable from sperm-oil, this whale became the object of a regular chase in the latter half of the 19th century. In length these whales vary between 20 ft. and 30 ft.; and in colour from black on the upper surface in the young to light brown in old animals, the under-parts being greyish white. There is no notch between the flukes, as in other whales, but the hinder part of the tail is rounded. Bottlenoses feed on cuttle-fishes and squills, and are practically toothless; the only teeth which exist in the adult being a small pair at the front of the lower jaw, concealed beneath the gum during life. Examples have frequently been recorded on the British coasts. In November 1904 a female, 24 ft. long, and a calf 15 ft. long were driven ashore at Whitstable. (SeeCetacea.)
BOTTOMRY,a maritime contract by which a ship (or bottom) is hypothecated in security for money borrowed for expenses incurred in the course of her voyage, under the condition that if she arrive at her destination the ship shall be liable for repayment of the loan, together with such premium thereon as may have been agreed for; but that if the ship be lost, the lender shall have no claim against the borrower either for the sum advanced or for the premium. The freight may be pledged as well as the ship, and, if necessary, the cargo also. In some cases the personal obligation of the shipmaster is also included. When money is borrowed on the security of the cargo alone, it is said to be taken up atrespondentia; but it is now only in rare and exceptional cases that it could be competent to the shipmaster to pledge the cargo, except under a general bottomry obligation, along with the ship and freight. In consideration of the risks assumed by the lender, the bottomry premium (sometimes termedmaritime interest) is usually high, varying of course with the nature of the risk and the difficulty of procuring funds.
A bottomry contract may be written out in any form which sufficiently shows the conditions agreed on between the parties; but it is usually drawn up in the form of abondwhich confers a maritime lien (q.v.). The document must show, either by express terms or from its general tenor, that the risk of loss is assumed by the lender,—this being the consideration for which the high premium is conceded. The lender may transfer the bond by indorsation, in the same manner as a bill of exchange or bill of lading, and the right to recover its value becomes vested in the indorsees. (SeeBond.)
According to the law of England, a bottomry contract remains in force so long as the ship existsin the form of a ship, whatever amount of damage she may have sustained. Consequently, the “constructive total loss” which is recognized in marine insurance, when the ship is damaged to such an extent that she is not worth repairing, is not recognized in reference to bottomry, and will not absolve the borrower from his obligation. But if the ship go to pieces, the borrower is freed from all liability under the bottomry contract; and the lender is not entitled to receive any share of the proceeds of such of the ship’s stores or materials as may have been saved from the wreck. Money advanced on bottomry is not liable in England for general average losses. If the ship shoulddeviatefrom the voyage for which the funds were advanced, her subsequent loss will not discharge the obligation of the borrower under the bottomry contract. If she should not proceed at all on her intended voyage, the lender is not entitled to recover the bottomry premium in addition to his advance, but only the ordinary rate of interest for the temporary loan. As the bottomry premium is presumed, in every case, to cover the risks incurred by the lender, he is not entitled to charge the borrower with the premium which he may pay forinsuranceof the sum advanced, in addition to that stipulated in the bond.
The contract of bottomry seems to have arisen from the custom of permitting the master of a ship, when in a foreign country, to pledge the ship in order to raise money for repairs, or other extraordinary expenditures rendered necessary in the course of the voyage. Circumstances often arise, in which, without the exercise of this power on the part of the master, it would be impossible to provide means for accomplishing the voyage; and it is better that the master should have authority to burden the ship, and, if necessary, the freight and cargo also, in security for the money which has become requisite, than that the adventure should be defeated by inability to proceed. But the right of the master to pledge the ship or goods must always be created by necessity; if exercised without necessity the contract will be void. Accordingly, the master of a British ship has no power to grant a bottomry bond at a British port, or at any foreign port where he might raise funds on the personal credit of the shipowners. Neither has he any power to pledge the ship or goods for private debts of his own, but only for such supplies as are indispensable for the purposes of the voyage. And in all cases he ought, if possible, to communicate with the owners of the ship, and with the proprietor of the cargo before pledging their property (“The Bonaparte,” 1853, 8 Moo. P.C. 473; “The Staffordshire,” 1872, L.R. 4 P.C. 194). Increased facility of communication, by telegraph and otherwise, has given additional stringency to this rule, and caused a decline in the practice of giving bottomry bonds.
The bottomry lender must use reasonable diligence to ascertain that a real necessity exists for the loan; but he is not bound to see to the application of the money advanced. If the lender has originally advanced the funds on the personal credit of the owner he is not entitled to require a bottomry obligation. A bond procured from the shipmaster by improper compulsion would be void.
The power of the master to pledge the cargo depends upon there being some reasonable prospect of benefit to it by his so doing. He has no such power except in virtue of circumstances which may oblige him to assume the character ofagent for the cargo, in the absence of any other party authorized to act on its behalf. Under ordinary circumstances he is not at liberty to pledge the cargo for repairs to the ship. If indeed the goods be of a perishable nature, and if it be impossible to get the ship repaired in sufficient time to obviate serious loss on them by delay, without including them under the bottomry contract, he has power to do so, because it may fairly be assumed, in the case supposed, that the cargo will be benefited by this procedure. The general principle is, that the master must act for the cargo, with a reasonable view to the interests of its proprietors, under the whole circumstances of the case. When he does this his proceedings will be sustained; but should he manifestly prejudice the interests of the cargo by including it under bottomry for the mere purpose of relieving the ship, or of earning the freight, the owners of the cargo will not be bound by the bottomry contract. Any bottomry or respondentia bond may be good in part or bad in part, according as the master may have actedwithinorbeyondthe scope of his legitimate authority in granting it. If two or more bottomry bonds have been granted at different stages of the voyage, and the value of the property be insufficient to discharge them all, the last-dated bond has the priority of payment, as having furnished the means of preserving the ship, and thereby preventing the total loss of the security for the previous bonds.
When the sum due under a bottomry bond over ship, freight and cargo is not paid at the stipulated time, proceedings may be taken by the bondholder for recovery of the freight and for the sale of the ship; and should the proceeds of these be insufficient to discharge the claim, a judicial sale of the cargo may be resorted to. As a general rule the value of the ship and freight must be exhausted before recourse can be taken against the cargo. A bottomry bond gives no remedy to the lenders against the owners of the ship or cargo personally. The whole liability under it may be met by the surrender of the property pledged, whether the value so surrendered covers the amount of the bond or not. But the owners of the ship, though not liable to the bondholder for more than the value of the ship and freight, may be further liable to the proprietors of the cargo for any sum in excess of the cargo’s proper share of the expenses, taken by the bondholder out of the proceeds of the cargo to satisfy the bond after the ship and freight have been exhausted.
The bottomry premium must be ultimately paid by the parties for whose benefit the advances were obtained, as ascertained on the final adjustment of the average expenditures at the port of destination.
The practice of pledging property subject to maritime risks was common among the ancient Greeks, being known asἔκδοσιςorδάνειον(see Demosthenes’ speechesPro Phormione, Contra LacritumandIn Dionysodorum); it passed into Roman law asfoenus nauticumorusura maritima.See alsoLien:Maritime; and generally Abbott onShipping(14th ed., 1901).
The practice of pledging property subject to maritime risks was common among the ancient Greeks, being known asἔκδοσιςorδάνειον(see Demosthenes’ speechesPro Phormione, Contra LacritumandIn Dionysodorum); it passed into Roman law asfoenus nauticumorusura maritima.
See alsoLien:Maritime; and generally Abbott onShipping(14th ed., 1901).
BOTZARIS[Bozzaris],MARCO(c.1788-1823), leader in the War of Greek Independence, born at Suli in Albania, was the second son of Kitzo Botzaris, murdered at Arta in 1809 by order of Ali of Iannina. In 1803, after the capture of Suli by Ali Pasha, Marco, with the remnant of the Suliots, crossed over to the Ionian Islands, where he ultimately took service in an Albanian regiment in French pay. In 1814 he joined the Greek patriotic society known as theHetairia Philike, and in 1820, with other Suliots, made common cause with Ali of Iannina against the Ottomans. On the outbreak of the Greek revolt, he distinguished himself by his courage, tenacity and skill as a partisan leader in the fighting in western Hellas, and was conspicuous in the defence of Missolonghi during the first siege (1822-1823). On the night of the 21st of August 1823 he led the celebrated attack at Karpenisi of 350 Suliots on 4000 Albanians who formed the vanguard of the army with which Mustai Pasha was advancing to reinforce the besiegers. The rout of the Turks was complete; but Botzaris himself fell. His memory is still celebrated in popular ballads in Greece. Marco Botzaris’s brother Kosta (Constantine), who fought at Karpenisi and completed the victory, lived to become a general and senator in the Greek kingdom. He died at Athens on the 13th of November 1853. Marco’s son, Dimitri Botzaris, born in 1813, was three times minister of war under the kings Otho and George. He died at Athens on the 17th of August 1870.
BOTZEN,orBozen(Ital.Bolzano), a town in the Austrian province of Tirol, situated at the confluence of the Talfer with the Eisak, and a short way above the junction of the latter with the Adige or Etsch. It is built at a height of 869 ft., and is a station on the Brenner railway, being 58 m. S. of that pass and 35 m. N. of Trent. In 1900 it had a population of 13,632, Romanist and mainly German-speaking, though the Italian element is said to be increasing. Botzen is a Teutonic town amid Italian surroundings. It is well built, and boasts of a fine old Gothic parish church, dating from the 14th and 15th centuries, opposite which a statue was erected in 1889 to the memory of the famousMinnesänger, Walther von der Vogelweide, who, according to some accounts, was born (c. 1170) at a farm above Waidbruck, to the north of Botzen. Botzen is the busiest commercial town in the German-speaking portion of Tirol, being admirably situated at the junction of the Brenner route from Germany to Italy with that from Switzerland down the Upper Adige valley or the Vintschgau. Hence the transit trade has always been very considerable (it has four large fairs annually), while the local wine is mentioned as early as the 7th century. Lately its prosperity has been increased by the rise into favour as a winter resort of the village of Gries, on the other bank of the Talfer, and now practically a suburb of Botzen.
Thepons Drusi(probably over the Adige, just below Botzen) is mentioned in the 4th century by thePeutinger Table. In the 7th to 8th centuries Botzen was held by a dynasty of Bavarian counts. But in 1027, with the rest of the diocese of Trent, it was given by the emperor Conrad II. to the bishop of Trent. From 1028 onwards it was ruled by local counts, the vassals of the bishops, but after Tirol fell into the hands of the Habsburgers (1363) their power grew at the expense of that of the bishops. In 1381 Leopold granted to the citizens the privilege of having a town council, while in 1462 the bishops resigned all rights of jurisdiction over the town to the Habsburgers, so that its later history is merged in that of Tirol.
(W. A. B. C.)
BOUCHARDON, EDME(1698-1762), French sculptor, was esteemed in his day the greatest sculptor of his time. Born at Chaumont, he became the pupil of Guillaume Coustou and gained theprix de Romein 1722. Resisting the tendency of the day he was classic in his taste, pure and chaste, always correct, charming and distinguished, a great stickler for all the finish that sand-paper could give. During the ten years he remained at Rome, Bouchardon made a striking bust of Pope Benedict XIII. (1730). In 1746 he produced his first acclaimed masterpiece, “Cupid fashioning a Bow out of the Club of Hercules,” perfect in its grace, but cold in the purity of its classic design. His two other leadingchefs-d’œuvreare the fountain in the rue de Grenelle, Paris, the first portions of which had been finished and exhibited in 1740, and the equestrian statue of Louis XV., a commission from the city of Paris. This superb work, which, when the model was produced, was declared the finest work of its kind ever produced in France, Bouchardon did not live to finish, but left its completion to Pigalle. It was destroyed during the Revolution.
Among the chief books on the sculptor and his art areVie d’Edme Bouchardon, by le comte de Caylus (Paris, 1762);Notice sur Edme Bouchardon, sculpteur, by E. Jolibois (Versailles, 1837);Notice historique sur Edme Bouchardon, by J. Carnandet (Paris, 1855); andFrench Architects and Sculptors of the 18th Century, by Lady Dilke (London, 1900).
Among the chief books on the sculptor and his art areVie d’Edme Bouchardon, by le comte de Caylus (Paris, 1762);Notice sur Edme Bouchardon, sculpteur, by E. Jolibois (Versailles, 1837);Notice historique sur Edme Bouchardon, by J. Carnandet (Paris, 1855); andFrench Architects and Sculptors of the 18th Century, by Lady Dilke (London, 1900).
BOUCHER, FRANÇOIS(1703-1770), French painter, was born in Paris, and at first was employed by Jean François Cars (1670-1739), the engraver, father of the engraver Laurent Cars (1699-1771), to make designs and illustrations for books. In 1727,however, he went to Italy, and at Rome became well known as a painter. He returned to Paris in 1731 and soon became a favourite in society. His picture “Rinaldo and Armida” (1734) is now in the Louvre. He was made inspector of the Gobelins factory in 1755 and court painter in 1765, and was employed by Madame de Pompadour both to paint her portrait and to execute various decorative works. He died in 1770. His Watteau-like style and graceful voluptuousness gave him the title of the Anacreon of painting, but his repute declined until recent years. The Wallace collection, at Hertford House, has some of his finest pictures, outside the Louvre. His etchings were also numerous and masterly.
See Antoine Bret’s notice in theNécrologe des hommes célèbresfor 1771, and the monographs by the brothers de Goncourt and Paul Mantz.
See Antoine Bret’s notice in theNécrologe des hommes célèbresfor 1771, and the monographs by the brothers de Goncourt and Paul Mantz.
BOUCHER, JONATHAN(1738-1804), English divine and philologist, was born in the hamlet of Blencogo, near Wigton, Cumberland, on the 12th of March 1738. He was educated at the Wigton grammar school, and about 1754 went to Virginia, where he became a private tutor in the families of Virginia planters. Among his charges was John Parke Custis, the step-son of George Washington, with whom he began a long and intimate friendship. Returning to England, he was ordained by the bishop of London in March 1762, and at once sailed again for America, where he remained until 1775 as rector of various Virginia and Maryland parishes, including Hanover, King George’s county, Virginia, and St Anne’s at Annapolis, Maryland. He was widely known as an eloquent preacher, and his scholarly attainments won for him the friendship and esteem of some of the ablest scholars in the colonies. During his residence in Maryland he vigorously opposed the “vestry act,” by which the powers and emoluments of the Maryland pastors were greatly diminished. When the struggle between the colonies and the mother country began, although he felt much sympathy for the former, his opposition to any form of obstruction to the Stamp Act and other measures, and his denunciation of a resort to force created a breach between him and his parish, and in a fiery farewell discourse preached after the opening of hostilities he declared that no power on earth should prevent him from praying and shouting “God save the King.” In the succeeding autumn he returned to England, where his loyalism was rewarded by a government pension. In 1784 he became vicar of Epsom in Surrey, where he continued until his death on the 27th of April 1804, becoming known as one of the most eloquent preachers of his day. He was an accomplished writer and scholar, contributed largely to William Hutchinson’sHistory of the County of Cumberland(2 vols., 1704 seq.), and publishedA View of the Causes and Consequences of the American Revolution(1797), dedicated to George Washington, and consisting of thirteen discourses delivered in America between 1763 and 1775. His philological studies, to which the last fourteen years of his life were devoted, resulted in the compilation of “A Glossary of Provincial and Archaic Words,” intended as a supplement to Dr Johnson’sDictionary, but never published except in part, which finally in 1831 passed into the hands of the English compilers of Webster’sDictionary, by whom it was utilized.
His son,Barton Boucher(1794-1865), rector of Fonthill Bishops, Wiltshire, in 1856, was well known as the author of religious tracts, hymns and novels.
BOUCHER DE CRÈVCOEUR DE PERTHES, JACQUES(1788-1868), French geologist and antiquary, was born on the 10th of September 1788 at Rethel, Ardennes, France. He was the eldest son of Jules Armand Guillaume Boucher de Crèvecœur, botanist and customs officer, and of Étienne-Jeanne-Marie de Perthes (whose surname he was authorized by royal decree in 1818 to assume in addition to his father’s). In 1802 he entered government employ as an officer of customs. His duties kept him for six years in Italy, whence returning (in 1811) he found rapid promotion at home, and finally was appointed (March 1825) to succeed his father as director of thedouaneat Abbeville, where he remained for the rest of his life, being superannuated in January 1853, and dying on the 5th of August 1868. His leisure was chiefly devoted to the study of what was afterwards called the Stone Age, “antediluvian man,” as he expressed it. About the year 1830 he had found, in the gravels of the Somme valley, flints which in his opinion bore evidence of human handiwork; but not until many years afterwards did he make public the important discovery of a worked flint implement with remains of elephant, rhinoceros, &c., in the gravels of Menchecourt. This was in 1846. A few years later he commenced the issue of his monumental work,Antiquités celtiques et an édiluviennes(1847, 1857, 1864; 3 vols.), a work in which he was the first to establish the existence of man in the Pleistocene or early Quaternary period. His views met with little approval, partly because he had previously propounded theories regarding the antiquity of man without facts to support them, partly because the figures in his book were badly executed and they included drawings of flints which showed no clear sign of workmanship. In 1855 Dr Jean Paul Rigollot (1810-1873), of Amiens, strongly advocated the authenticity of the flint implements; but it was not until 1858 that Hugh Falconer (q.v.) saw the collection at Abbeville and induced Prestwich (q.v.) in the following year to visit the locality. Prestwich then definitely agreed that the flint implements were the work of man, and that they occurred in undisturbed ground in association with remains of extinct mammalia. In 1863 his discovery of a human jaw, together with worked flints, in a gravel-pit at Moulin-Quignon near Abbeville seemed to vindicate Boucher de Perthes entirely; but doubt was thrown on the antiquity of the human remains (owing to the possibility of interment), though not on the good faith of the discoverer, who was the same year made an officer of the Legion of Honour together with Quatrefages his champion. Boucher de Perthes displayed activity in many other directions. For more than thirty years he filled the presidential chair of the Société d’Émulation at Abbeville, to the publications of which he contributed articles on a wide range of subjects. He was the author of several tragedies, two books of fiction, several works of travel, and a number of books on economic and philanthropic questions. To his scientific books may be addedDe l’homme antédilumen et de ses œuvres(Paris, 1860).
See Alcius Ledien,Boucher de Perthes; sa vie, ses œuvres, sa correspondence(Abbeville, 1885); Lady Prestwich, “Recollections of M. Boucher de Perthes” (with portrait) inEssays Descriptive and Biographical(1901).
See Alcius Ledien,Boucher de Perthes; sa vie, ses œuvres, sa correspondence(Abbeville, 1885); Lady Prestwich, “Recollections of M. Boucher de Perthes” (with portrait) inEssays Descriptive and Biographical(1901).
BOUCHES-DU-RHÔNE,a maritime department of south-eastern France situated at the mouth of the Rhone. Area, 2026 sq. m. Pop. (1906) 765,918. Formed in 1790 from western Provence, it is bounded N. by Vaucluse, from which it is separated by the Durance, E. by Var, W. by Card, and S. by the Mediterranean, along which its seaboard stretches for about 120 m. The western portion consists of the Camargue (q.v.), a low and marshy plain enclosed between the Rhone and the Petit-Rhône, and comprising the Rhone delta. A large portion of its surface is covered by lagoons and pools (étangs), the largest of which is the Étang de Vaccarès; to the east of the Camargue is situated the remarkable stretch of country called the Crau, which is strewn with pebbles like the sea-beach; and farther east and north there are various ranges of mountains of moderate elevation belonging to the Alpine system. The Étang de Berre, a lagoon covering an area of nearly 60 sq. m., is situated near the sea to the south-east of the Crau. A few small tributaries of the Rhone and the Durance, a number of streams, such as the Arc and the Touloubre, which flow into the Étang de Berre, and the Huveaune, which finds its way directly to the sea, are the only rivers that properly belong to the department.
Bouches-du-Rhône enjoys the beautiful climate of the Mediterranean coast, the chief drawback being the mistral, the icy north-west wind blowing from the central plateau of France. The proportion of arable land is small, though the quantity has been considerably increased by artificial irrigation and by the draining of marshland. Cereals, of which wheat and oats are the commonest, are grown in the Camargue and the plain of Aries, but they are of less importance than the olive-tree, whichis grown largely in the east of the department and supplies the oil-works of Marseilles. The vine is also cultivated, the method of submersion being used as a safeguard against phylloxera. In the cantons of the north-west large quantities of early vegetables are produced. Of live-stock, sheep alone are raised to any extent. Almonds, figs, capers, mulberry trees and silkworms are sources of considerable profit. Iron is worked, but the most important mines are those of lignite, in which between 2000 and 3000 workmen are employed; the department also produces bauxite, building-stone, lime, cement, gypsum, clay, sand and gravel and marble. The salt marshes employ many workmen, and the amount of sea-salt obtained exceeds in quantity the produce of any other department in France. Marseilles, the capital, is by far the most important industrial town. In its oil-works, soap-works, metallurgical works, shipbuilding works, distilleries, flour-mills, chemical works, tanneries, engineering and machinery works, brick and tile works, manufactories of preserved foods and biscuits, and other industrial establishments, is concentrated most of the manufacturing activity of the department. To these must be added the potteries of the industrial town of Aubagne, the silk-works in the north-west cantons, and various paper and cardboard manufactories, while several of the industries of Marseilles, such as the distilling of oil, metal-founding, shipbuilding and soap-making, are common to the whole of Bouches-du-Rhône. Fishing is also an important industry. Cereals, flour, silk, woollen and cotton goods, wine, brandy, oils, soap, sugar and coffee are chief exports; cereals, oil-seeds, wine and brandy, raw sugar, cattle, timber, silk, wool, cotton, coal, &c., are imported. The foreign commerce of the department, which is principally carried on in the Mediterranean basin, is for the most part concentrated in the capital; the minor ports are Martigues, Cassis and La Ciotat. Internal trade is facilitated by the canal from Aries to Port-de-Bouc and two smaller canals, in all about 35 m. in length. The Rhone and the Petit-Rhône are both navigable within the department.
Bouches-du-Rhône is divided into the three arrondissements of Marseilles, Aix and Arles (33 cantons, 111 communes). It belongs to the archiepiscopal province of Aix, to the region of the XV. army corps, the headquarters of which are at Marseilles, and to theacadémie(educational division) of Aix. Its court of appeal is at Aix. Marseilles, Aix, Arles, La Ciotat, Martigues, Salon, Les Saintes-Maries, St Rémy, Les Baux and Tarascon, the principal places, are separately noticed. Objects of interest elsewhere may be mentioned. Near Saint-Chamas there is a remarkable Roman bridge over the Touloubre, which probably dates from the 1st centuryB.C.and is thus the oldest in France. It is supported on one semicircular span and has triumphal arches at either end. At Vernègues there are remains of a Roman temple known as the “Maison-Basse.” The famous abbey of Montmajour, of which the oldest parts are the Romanesque church and cloister, is 2½ m. from Arles. At Orgon there are the ruins of a château of the 15th century, and near La Roque d’Anthéron the church and other buildings of the Cistercian abbey of Silvacane, founded in the 12th century.
BOUCHOR, MAURICE(1855- ), French poet, was born on the 15th of December 1855 in Paris. He published in successionChansons joyeuses(1874),Poèmes de l’amour et de la mer(1875),Le Faust moderne(1878) in prose and verse, andLes Contes parisiens(1880) in verse. HisAurore(1883) showed a tendency to religious mysticism, which reached its fullest expression inLes Symboles(1888; new series, 1895), the most interesting of his works. Bouchor (whose brother, Joseph Félix Bouchor, b. 1853, became well known as an artist) was a sculptor as well as a poet, and he designed and worked the figures used in his charming pieces as marionettes, the words being recited or chanted by himself or his friends behind the scenes. These miniature dramas on religious subjects,Tobie(1889),Noël(1890) andSainte Cécile(1892), were produced in Paris at the Théâtre des Marionnettes. A one-act verse drama by Bouchor, Conte de Noël, was played at the Théâtre Français in 1895, butDieu le veut(1888) was not produced. In conjunction with the musician Julien Tiersot (b. 1857), he made efforts for the preservation of the French folk-songs, and publishedChants populaires pour les écoles(1897).
BOUCHOTTE, JEAN BAPTISTE NOËL(1754-1840), French minister, was born at Metz on the 25th of December 1754. At the outbreak of the Revolution he was a captain of cavalry, and his zeal led to his being made colonel and given the command at Cambrai. When Dumouriez delivered up to the Austrians the minister of war, the marquis de Beurnonville, in April 1793, Bouchotte, who had bravely defended Cambrai, was called by the Convention to be minister of war, where he remained until the 31st of March 1794. The predominant rôle of the Committee of Public Safety during that period did not leave much scope for the new minister, yet he rendered some services in the organization of the republican armies, and chose his officers with insight, among them Kléber, Masséna, Moreau and Bonaparte. During the Thermidorian reaction, in spite of his incontestable honesty, he was accused by the anti-revolutionists. He was tried by the tribunal of the Eure-et-Loire and acquitted. Then he withdrew from politics, and lived in retirement until his death on the 8th of June 1840.
BOUCICAULT, DION(1822-1890), Irish actor and playwright, was born in Dublin on the 26th of December 1822, the son of a French refugee and an Irish mother. Before he was twenty he was fortunate enough to make an immediate success as a dramatist withLondon Assurance, produced at Covent Garden on the 4th of March 1841, with a cast that included Charles Matthews, William Farren, Mrs Nesbitt and Madame Vestris. He rapidly followed this with a number of other plays, among the most successful of the early ones beingOld Heads and Young Hearts,Louis XI., andThe Corsican Brothers. In June 1852 he made his first appearance as an actor in a melodrama of his own entitledThe Vampireat the Princess’s theatre. From 1853 to 1869 he was in the United States, where he was always a popular favourite. On his return to England he produced at the Adelphi a dramatic adaptation of Gerald Griffin’s novel,The Collegians, entitledThe Colleen Bawn. This play, one of the most successful of modern times, was performed in almost every city of the United Kingdom and the United States, and made its author a handsome fortune, which he lost in the management of various London theatres. It was followed byThe Octoroon(1861), the popularity of which was almost as great. Boucicault’s next marked success was at the Princess’s theatre in 1865 withArrah-na-Pogue, in which he played the part of a Wicklow carman. This, and his admirable creation of Con in his playThe Shaughraun(first produced at Drury Lane in 1875), won him the reputation of being the best stage Irishman of his time. In 1875 he returned to New York City and finally made his home there, but he paid occasional visits to London, where his last appearance was made in his play,The Jilt, in 1886.The Streets of LondonandAfter Darkwere two of his late successes as a dramatist. He died in New York on the 18th of September 1890. Boucicault was twice married, his first wife being Agnes Robertson, the adopted daughter of Charles Kean, and herself an actress of unusual ability. Three children, Dion (b. 1859), Aubrey (b. 1868) and Nina, also became distinguished in the profession.
BOUCICAUT, JEAN[Jean le Meingre, calledBoucicaut] (c.1366-1421), marshal of France, was the son of another Jean le Meingre, also known as Boucicaut, marshal of France, who died on the 15th of March 1368 (N.S.). At a very early age he became a soldier; he fought in Normandy, in Flanders and in Prussia, distinguishing himself at the battle of Roosebeke in 1382; and then after a campaign in Spain he journeyed to the Holy Land. Boucicaut’s great desire appears to have been to fight the Turk, and in 1396 he was one of the French soldiers who marched to the defence of Hungary and shared in the Christian defeat at Nicopolis, where he narrowly escaped death. After remaining for some months a captive in the hands of the sultan, he obtained his ransom and returned to France; then in 1399 he was sent at the head of an army to aid the Eastern emperor, Manuel II., who was harassed by the Turks. Boucicaut drove the enemy from his position before Constantinople and returned to France for fresh troops, but instead of proceedingagain to eastern Europe, he was despatched in 1401 to Genoa, who in 1396 had placed herself under the dominion of France. Here he was successful in restoring order and in making the French occupation effective, and he was soon able to turn his attention to the defence of the Genoese possessions in the Mediterranean. The energy which he showed in this direction involved him not only in a quarrel with Janus, king of Cyprus, but led also to a short war with Venice, whose fleet he encountered off Modon in the Archipelago in October 1403. This battle has been claimed by both sides as a victory. Peace was soon made with the republic, and then in 1409, while the marshal was absent on a campaign in northern Italy, Genoa threw off the French yoke, and Boucicaut, unable to reduce her again to submission, retired to Languedoc. He fought at Agincourt, where he was taken prisoner, and died in England. Boucicaut, who was very skilful in the tournament, founded the order of theDame blanche à l’écu vert, a society the object of which was to defend the wives and daughters of absent knights.
There is in existence an anonymous account of Boucicaut’s life and adventures, entitledLivre des faits du bon messire Jean le Meingre dit Boucicaut, which was published in Paris by T. Godefroy in 1620. See J. Delaville le Roulx,La France en Orient: expéditions du maréchal Boucicaut(Paris, 1886).
There is in existence an anonymous account of Boucicaut’s life and adventures, entitledLivre des faits du bon messire Jean le Meingre dit Boucicaut, which was published in Paris by T. Godefroy in 1620. See J. Delaville le Roulx,La France en Orient: expéditions du maréchal Boucicaut(Paris, 1886).
BOUDIN, EUGÈNE(1824-1898), French painter of thepaysage de mer, was the son of a pilot. Born at Honfleur he was cabin-boy for a while on board the rickety steamer that plied between Havre and Honfleur across the estuary of the Seine. But before old age came on him, Boudin’s father abandoned seafaring, and the son gave it up too, having of course no real vocation for it, though he preserved to his last days much of a sailor’s character,—frankness, accessibility, open-heartedness. Boudin the elder now established himself as stationer and frame-maker; this time in the greater seaport town of Havre; and Eugène helped in the little business, and, in stolen hours, produced certain drawings. That was a time at which the romantic outlines of the Norman coast engaged Isabey, and the green wide valleys of the inland country engaged Troyon; and Troyon and Isabey, and Millet too, came to the shop at Havre. Young Boudin found his desire to be a painter stimulated by their influence; his work made a certain progress, and the interest taken in the young man resulted in his being granted for a short term of years by the town of his adoption a pension, that he might study painting. He studied partly in Paris; but whatever individuality he possessed in those years was hidden and covered, rather than disclosed. An instance of tiresome, elaborate labour—good enough, no doubt, as groundwork, and not out of keeping with what at least was the popular taste of that day—is his “Pardon of Sainte Anne de la Palud,” a Breton scene, of 1858, in which he introduced the young Breton woman who was immediately to become his wife. This conscientious and unmoving picture hangs in the museum of Havre, along with a hundred later, fresher, thoroughly individual studies and sketches, the gift of Boudin’s brother, Louis Boudin, after the painter’s death. Re-established at Honfleur, Boudin was married and poor. But his work gained character and added, to merely academic correctness, character and charm. He was beginning to be himself by 1864 or 1865—that was the first of such periods of his as may be accounted good—and, though not at that time so fully a master of transient effects of weather as he became later, he began then to paint with a success genuinely artistic the scenes of the harbour and the estuary, which no longer lost vivacity by deliberate and too obvious completeness. The war of 1870-71 found Boudin impecunious but great, for then there had well begun the series of freshly and vigorously conceived canvases and panels, which record the impressions of a precursor of the Impressionists in presence of the Channel waters, and of those autumn skies, or skies of summer, now radiant, now uncertain, which hung over the small ports and the rocky or chalk-cliff coasts, over the watering-places, Trouville, Dieppe, and over those larger harbours, withportandavant-portandbassin, of Dunkirk, of Havre. In the war time, Boudin was in Brittany and then in the Low Countries. About 1875-1876 he was at Rotterdam and Bordeaux. That great bird’s-eye vision of Bordeaux which is in the Luxembourg dates from these years, and in these years he was at Rotterdam, the companion of Jongkind, with whom he had so much in common, but whose work, like his, free and fearless and unconventional, can never be said with accuracy to have seriously influenced his own. Doing excellent things continually through all the ’seventies, when he was in late middle age—gaining scope in colour, having now so many notes—faithful no longer wholly to his amazing range of subtle greys, now blithe and silvery, now nobly deep—sending to the Salon great canvases, and to the few enlightened people who would buy them of him thetoileor panel of most moderate size on which he best of all expressed himself—Boudin was yet not acceptable to the public or to the fashionable dealer. The late ’eighties had to come and Boudin to be elderly before there was a sale for his work at any prices that were in the least substantial. Broadly speaking his work in those very ’eighties was not so good as the labour, essentially delicate and fresh and just, of some years earlier, nor had it always the attractiveness of the impulsive deliverances of some years later, when the inspired sketch was the thing that he generally stopped at. Old age found him strong and receptive. Only in the very last year of his life was there perceptible a positive deterioration. Not very long before it, Boudin, in a visit to Venice, had produced impressions of Venice for which much more was to be said than that they were not Ziem’s. And the deep colouring of the South, on days when the sunshine blazes least, had been caught by him and presented nobly at Antibes and Villefranche. At last, resorting to the south again as a refuge from ill-health, and recognizing soon that the relief it could give him was almost spent, he resolved that it should not be for him, in the words of Maurice Barrès, a “tombe fleurie,” and he returned, hastily, weak and sinking, to his home at Deauville, that he might at least die within sight of Channel waters and under Channel skies. As a “marine painter”—more properly as a painter of subjects in which water must have some part, and as curiously expert in the rendering of all that goes upon the sea, and as the painter too of the green banks of tidal rivers and of the long-stretched beach, with crinolined Parisienne noted as ably as the sailor-folk—Boudin stands alone. Beside him others are apt to seem rather theatrical—or if they do not romance they appear, perhaps, to chronicle dully. The pastels of Boudin—summary and economic even in the ’sixties, at a time when his painted work was less free—obtained the splendid eulogy of Baudelaire, and it was no other than Corot who, before his pictures, said to him: “You are the master of the sky.”
See also Gustave Cahen,Eugène Boudin(Paris, 1899); Arsène Alexandre,Essais; Frederick Wedmore,Whistler and Others(1906).
See also Gustave Cahen,Eugène Boudin(Paris, 1899); Arsène Alexandre,Essais; Frederick Wedmore,Whistler and Others(1906).
(F. We.)
BOUDINOT, ELIAS(1740-1821), American revolutionary leader, was born at Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, of Huguenot descent, on the 2nd of May 1740. He studied law at Princeton, New Jersey, in the office of Richard Stockton, whose sister Hannah he married in 1762, and in November 1760 he was licensed as a counsellor and attorney-at-law, afterwards practising at Elizabethtown, New Jersey. On the approach of the War of Independence he allied himself with the conservative Whigs. He was a deputy to the provincial congress of New Jersey from May to August 1775, and from May 1777 until July 1778 was the commissary-general of prisoners, with the rank of colonel, in the continental army. He was one of the New Jersey members of the continental congress in 1778 and again from 1781 until 1783, and from November 1782 until October 1783 was president of that body, acting also for a short time, after the resignation of Robert R. Livingston, as secretary for foreign affairs. From 1789 to 1795 he sat as a member of the national House of Representatives, and from 1795 until 1805 he was the director of the United States mint at Philadelphia. He took an active part in the founding of the American Bible Society in 1816, of which he became the first president. He was a trustee and a benefactor of the college of New Jersey (afterwards Princeton University).In reply to Thomas Paine’sAge of Reason, he published theAge of Revelation(1790); he also published a volume entitledA Star in the West, or a Humble Attempt to Discover the Long Lost Ten Tribes of Israel(1816), in which he endeavours to prove that the American Indians may be the ten lost tribes. Boudinot died at Burlington, New Jersey, on the 24th of October 1821.