The Nuttall Encyclopaedia Part 70

BERTHA, G.o.ddess in the S. German mythology, of the spinning-wheel princ.i.p.ally, and of the household as dependent on it, in behalf of which and its economical management she is often harsh to idle spinners; at her festival thrift is the rule.

BERTHA, ST., a British princess, wife of Ethelbert, king of Kent; converted him to Christianity.

BERTHE "au Grand Pied" (i. e. Long Foot), wife of Pepin the Short, and mother of Charlemagne, so called from her club foot.

BERTHELIER, a Swiss patriot, an uncompromising enemy of the Duke of Savoy in his ambition to lord it over Geneva.

BERTHELOT, PIERRE EUGeNE, a French chemist, born at Paris; professor in the College of France; distinguished for his researches in organic chemistry, and his attempt to produce organic compounds; the dyeing trade owes much to his discoveries in the extraction of dyes from coal-tar; he laid the foundation of thermo-chemistry; _b_. 1827.

BERTHIER, ALEXANDRE, prince of Wagram and marshal of France, born at Versailles; served with Lafayette in the American war, and rose to distinction in the Revolution; became head of Napoleon's staff, and his companion in all his expeditions; swore fealty to the Bourbons at the restoration of 1814; on Napoleon's return retired with his family to Bamberg; threw himself from a window, maddened at the sight of Russian troops marching past to the French frontier (1753-1815).

BERTHOLLET, COUNT, a famous chemist, native of Savoy, to whom we owe the discovery of the bleaching properties of chlorine, the employment of carbon in purifying water, &c., and many improvements in the manufactures; became a senator and officer of the Legion of Honour under Napoleon; attached himself to the Bourbons on their return, and was created a peer (1744-1822).

BERTHOUD, a celebrated clockmaker, native of Switzerland; settled in Paris; invented the marine chronometer to determine the longitude at sea (1727-1807).

BERTIN "l'Aine," or the Elder, a French journalist, born at Paris; founder and editor of the _Journal des Debats_, which he started in 1799; friend of Chateaubriand (1766-1841).

BERTIN, PIERRE, introduced stenography into France, invented by Taylor in England (1751-1819).

BERTIN, ROSE, milliner to Marie Antoinette, famed for her devotion to her.

BERTINAZZI, a celebrated actor, born at Turin, long a favourite in Paris (1710-1788).

BERTRAND and RATON, two personages in La Fontaine's fable of the Monkey and the Cat, of whom R. cracks the nut and B. eats it.

BER'TRAND, HENRI GRATIEN, COMTE, a French general, and faithful adherent of Napoleon, accompanied him in all his campaigns, to and from Elba, as well as in his exile at St. Helena; conducted his remains back to France in 1840 (1770-1844).

BERTRAND DE MOLLEVILLE, Minister of Marine under Louis XVI.; a fiery partisan of royalty, surnamed the _enfant terrible_ of the monarchy (1744-1818).

BERTON, PIERRE, French composer of operas (1726-1780). Henri, his son, composed operas; wrote a treatise on harmony (1761-1844).

BeRULLE, CARDINAL, born at Troyes; founder of the order of Carmelites, and of the Congregation of the Oratory (1576-1629).

BERWICK, JAMES FITZ-JAMES, DUKE OF, a natural son of James II., a naturalised Frenchman; defended the rights of his father; was present with him at the battle of the Boyne; distinguished himself in Spain, where he gained the victory of Almanza; was made marshal of France; fell at the siege of Philippsburg; left "Memoirs" (1670-1734).

BERWICK, NORTH, a place on the S. sh.o.r.e of the Forth, in Haddingtons.h.i.+re; a summer resort, specially for the golfing links.

BERWICK-ON-TWEED (13), a town on the Scotch side of the Tweed, at its mouth, reckoned since 1835 in Northumberland, though at one time treated as a separate county; of interest from its connection with the Border wars, during which it frequently changed hands, till in 1482 the English became masters of it.

BERWICKs.h.i.+RE (32), a fertile Scottish county between the Lammermoors, inclusive, and the Tweed; is divided into the Merse, a richly fertile plain in the S., the Lammermoors, hilly and pastoral, dividing the Merse from Mid and East Lothian, and Lauderdale, of hill and dale, along the banks of the Leader; Greenlaw the county town.

BERZE'LIUS, JOHAN JAKOB, Baron, a celebrated Swedish chemist, one of the creators of modern chemistry; inst.i.tuted the chemical notation by symbols based on the notion of equivalents; determined the equivalents of a great number of simple bodies, such as cerium and silenium; discovered silenium, and shared with Davy the honour of propounding the electro-chemical theory; he ranks next to Linnaeus as a man of science in Sweden (1779-1848).

BESANcON (57), capital of the dep. of Doubs, in France; a very strong place; fortified by Vauban; abounds in relics of Roman and mediaeval times; watchmaking a staple industry, employing some 15,000 of the inhabitants; manufactures also porcelain and carpets.

BESANT, MRS. ANNIE, _nee_ WOOD, born in London; of Irish descent; married to an English clergyman, from whom she was legally separated; took a keen interest in social questions and secularism; drifted into theosophy, of which she is now an active propagandist; is an interesting woman, and has an interesting address as a lecturer; _b_.

1847.

BESANT, SIR WALTER, a man of letters, born at Portsmouth; eminent chiefly as a novelist of a healthily realistic type; wrote a number of novels jointly with James Rice, and is the author of "French Humourists,"

as well as short stories; champion of the cause of Authors _versus_ Publishers, and is chairman of the committee; _b_. 1838.

BESENVAL, BARON, a Swiss, commandant of Paris under Louis XVI.; a royalist stunned into a state of helpless dismay at the first outbreak of the Revolution in Paris; could do nothing in the face of it but run for his life (1722-1791).

BESIKA BAY, a bay on the Asiatic coast, near the mouth of the Dardanelles.

BESME, a Bohemian in the pay of the Duke of Guise; a.s.sa.s.sinated Coligny, and was himself killed by Berteauville, a Protestant gentleman, in 1571.

BESS, GOOD QUEEN, a familiar name of Queen Elizabeth.

BESSARA'BIA (1,688), a government in the SW. of Russia, between the Dniester and the Pruth; a cattle-breeding province; exports cattle, wool, and tallow.

BESSAR'ION, JOHN, cardinal, native of Trebizond; contributed by his zeal in Greek literature to the fall of scholasticism and the revival of letters; tried hard to unite the Churches of the East and the West; joined the latter, and was made cardinal; too much of a Grecian to recommend himself to the popehood, to which he was twice over nearly elevated (1395-1472).

BESSEL, FRIEDRICH WILHELM, a Prussian astronomer of prominent ability, born at Minden; professor of Mathematics at Konigsberg, and director of the Observatory; discovered--what was a great achievement--the parallax of the fixed star 61 Cygne; his greatest work, "Fundamenta Astronomiae," on which he spent 10 years, a marvel, like all he did, of patient toil and painstaking accuracy (1784-1846).

BESSEMER, SIR HENRY, civil engineer and inventor, born at Charlton, Herts; of his many inventions the chief is the process, named after him, of converting pig-iron into steel at once by blowing a blast of air through the iron while in fusion till everything extraneous is expelled, and only a definite quant.i.ty of carbon is left in combination, a process which has revolutionised the iron and steel trade all over the world, leading, as has been calculated, to the production of thirty times as much steel as before and at one-fifth of the cost per ton (1813-1898).