Encyclopedias Books

ARAM, EUGENE(1704-1759), English scholar, but more famous as the murderer celebrated by Hood in his ballad, theDream of Eugene Aram, and by Bulwer Lytton in his romance ofEugene Aram, was born of humble parents at Ramsgill, Yorkshire, in 1704. He received little education at school, but manifested an intense desire for learning. While still young, he married and settled as a schoolmaster at Netherdale,... more...

BULGARIA (continued from part 3) ... the mean interval being 60 m.; the summits are, as a rule, rounded, and the slopes gentle. The culminating points are in the centre of the range: Yumrukchál (7835 ft.), Maragudúk (7808 ft.), and Kadimlía (7464 ft.). The Balkans are known to the people of the country as the Stara Planina or "Old Mountain," the adjective denoting their greater size as... more...

BISHÂRÎN (the anc. Ichthyophagi), a nomad tribe of African “Arabs,” of Hamitic origin, dwelling in the eastern part of the Nubian desert. In the middle ages they were known as Beja (q.v.), and they are the most characteristic of the Nubian “Arabs.” With the Abâbda and Hadendoa they represent the Blemmyes of classical writers. Linguistically and geographically the Bishârîn form a connecting... more...

CHÂTELET (from Med. Lat. castella), the word, sometimes also written castillet, used in France for a building designed for the defence of an outwork or gate, sometimes of great strength or size, but distinguished from the château, or castle proper, in being purely defensive and not residential. In Paris, before the Revolution, this word was applied both to a particular building and to the... more...

BORGIA, LUCREZIA(1480-1519), duchess of Ferrara, daughter of Cardinal Rodrigo Borgia, afterwards Pope Alexander VI. (q.v.), by his mistress Vanozza dei Cattanei, was born at Rome in 1480. Her early years were spent at her mother’s house near her father’s splendid palace; but later she was given over to the care of Adriana de Mila, a relation of Cardinal Borgia and mother-in-law of Giulia Farnese,... more...

DIAMETER (from the Gr. διά, through, μέτρον, measure), in geometry, a line passing through the centre of a circle or conic section and terminated by the curve; the “principal diameters” of the ellipse and hyperbola coincide with the “axes” and are at right angles; “conjugate diameters” are such that each bisects chords parallel to the other. The diameter of a quadric... more...

ATHERSTONE, WILLIAM GUYBON (1813-1898), British geologist, one of the pioneers in South African geology, was born in 1813, in the district of Uitenhage, Cape Colony. Having qualified as M.D. he settled in early life as a medical practitioner at Grahamstown, subsequently becoming F.R.C.S. In 1839 his interest was aroused in geology, and from that date he “devoted the leisure of a long and successful... more...

BANKS, GEORGE LINNAEUS (1821-1881), British miscellaneous writer, was born at Birmingham on the 2nd of March 1821. After a brief experience in a variety of trades, he became at the age of seventeen a contributor to various newspapers, and subsequently a playwright, being the author of two plays, a couple of burlesques and several lyrics. Between 1848 and 1864 he edited in succession a variety of... more...

BRADFORD, WILLIAM (1590-1657), American colonial governor and historian, was born in Austerfield, Yorkshire, England, probably in March 1590. He became somewhat estranged from his family, which was one of considerable importance in the locality, when in early youth he joined the Puritan sect known as Separatists, and united in membership with the congregation at Scrooby. He prepared in 1607, with other... more...

BASSO-RELIEVO (Ital. for “low relief”), the term applied to sculpture in which the design projects but slightly from the plane of the background. The relief may not project at all from the original surface of the material, as in the sunken reliefs of the Egyptians, and may be nearly flat, as in the Panathenaic procession of the Parthenon. In the early 19th century the term basso-relievo, or... more...