[1] The Old English word for this appliance was _blastbaelig_, i.e.
"blow-bag," cf. German _Blasebalg_. By the 11th century the first
part of the word apparently dropped out of use, and _baelig, bylig_,
bag, is found in early glossaries as the equivalent of the Latin
_follis. Baelig_ became in Middle English _bely_, i.e. "belly," a
sack or bag, and so the general word for the lower part of the trunk
in man and animals, the stomach, and another form, probably northern
in origin, _belu, belw_, became the regular word for the appliance,
the plural "bellies" being still used till the 16th century, when
"bellows" appears, and the word in the singular ceases to be used.
The verb "to bellow" of the roar of a bull, or the low of a cow, is
from Old English _bellan_, to bell, roar.
BELLOY, DORMONT DE, the name assumed by PIERRE LAUREXT BUIREITE
(1727-1775), French dramatist, was born at Saint-Flour, in Auvergne, on
the 17th of November 1727. He was educated by his uncle, a distinguished
advocate in Paris, for the bar. To escape from a profession he disliked
he joined a troupe of comedians playing in the courts of the northern
sovereigns. In 1758 the performance of his _Titus_, which had already
been produced in St Petersburg, was postponed through his uncle's
exertions; and when it did appear, a hostile cabal procured its failure,
and it was not until after his guardian's death that de Belloy returned
to Paris with _Zelmire_ (1762), a fantastic drama which met with great
success. This was followed in 1765 by the patriotic play, _Le Siege de
Calais_. The moment was opportune. The humiliations undergone by France
in the Seven Years' War assured a good reception for a play in which the
devotion of Frenchmen redeemed disaster. The popular enthusiasm was
unaffected by the judgment of calmer critics such as Diderot and
Voltaire, who pointed out that the glorification of France was not best
effected by a picture of defeat. De Belloy was admitted to the Academy
in 1772. His attempt to introduce national subjects into French drama
deserves honour, but it must be confessed that his resources proved
unequal to the task. The _Siege de Calais_ was followed by _Gaston et
Bayard_ (1771), _Pedro le cruel_ (1772) and _Gabrielle de Vergy_ (1777).
None of these attained the success of the earlier play, and de Belloy's
death, which took place on the 5th of March 1775, is said to have been
hastened by disappointment.
BELL or INCHCAPE ROCK, a sandstone reef in the North Sea, 11 m. S.E. of
Arbroath, belonging to Forfarshire, Scotland. It measures 2000 ft. in
length, is under water at high tide, but at low tide is exposed for a
few feet, the sea for a distance of 100 yds. around being then only
three fathoms deep. Lying in the fairway of vessels making or leaving
the Tay and Forth, besides ports farther north, it was a constant menace
to navigation. In the great gale of 1799 seventy sail, including the
"York," 74 guns, were wrecked off the reef, and this disaster compelled
the authorities to take steps to protect shipping. Next year Robert
Stevenson modelled a tower and reported that its erection was feasible,
but it was only in 1806 that parliamentary powers were obtained, and
operations began in August 1807. Though John Rennie had meanwhile been
associated with Stevenson as consulting engineer, the structure in
design and details is wholly Stevenson's work. The tower is 100 ft.
high; its diameter at the base is 42 ft., decreasing to 15 ft. at the
top. It is solid for 30 ft. at which height the doorway is placed. The
interior is divided into six storeys. After five years the building was
finished at a cost of L61,300. Since the lighting no wrecks have
occurred on the reef. A bust of Stevenson by Samuel Joseph (d. 1850) was
placed in the tower.
According to tradition an abbot of Aberbrothock (Arbroath) had ordered a
bell--whence the name of the rock--to be fastened to the reef in such a
way that it should respond to the movements of the waves, and thus
always ring out a warning to mariners. This signal was wantonly
destroyed by a pirate, whose ship was afterwards wrecked at this very
spot, the rover and his men being drowned. Southey made the incident the
subject of his ballad of "The Inchcape Rock."
BELLUNO (anc. _Bellunum_), a city and episcopal see of Venetia, Italy,
the capital of the province of Belluno, N. of Treviso, 54 m. by rail and
28 m. direct. Pop. (1901) town, 6898; commune, 19,050. It is situated in
the valley of the Piave, at its confluence with the Ardo, 1285 ft. above
sea-level, among the lower Venetian Alps. It was a Roman _municipium_.
In the middle ages it went through various vicissitudes; it fell under
the dominion of Venice in 1511, and remained Venetian until 1797. Its
buildings present Venetian characteristics; it has some good palaces,
notably the fine early Lombard Renaissance Palazzo dei Rettori, now the
seat of the prefecture. The cathedral, erected after 1517 by Tullio
Lombardo, was much damaged by the earthquake of 1873, which destroyed a
considerable portion of the town, though the campanile, 217 ft. high,
erected in 1732-1743, stood firm. The facade was never finished.
Important remains of prehistoric settlements have been found in the
vicinity; cf. G. Ghirardini in _Notizie degli Scavi_, 1883, 27, on the
necropolis of Caverzano. (T. As.)
BELMONT, AUGUST (1816-1890), American banker and financier, was born at
Alzei, Rhenish Prussia, on the 8th of December 1816. He entered the
banking house of the Rothschilds at Frankfort at the age of fourteen,
acted as their agent for a time at Naples, and in 1837 settled in New
York as their American representative. He became an American citizen,
and married a daughter of Commodore Matthew C. Perry. He was the
consul-general of Austria at New York from 1844 to 1850, when he
resigned in protest against Austria's treatment of Hungary. In 1853-1855
he was charge d'affaires for the United States at the Hague, and from
1855 to 1858 was the American minister resident there. In 1860 he was a
delegate to the Democratic National Convention at Charleston, South
Carolina, actively supporting Stephen A. Douglas for the presidential
nomination, and afterwards joining those who withdrew to the convention
at Baltimore, Maryland, where he was chosen chairman of the National
Democratic Committee. He energetically supported the Union cause during
the Civil War, and exerted a strong influence in favour of the North
upon the merchants and financiers of England and France. He remained at
the head of the Democratic organization until 1872. He died in New York
on the 24th of November 1890.
His son, PERRY BELMONT (1851- ), was born in New York on the 28th of
December 1851, graduated at Harvard in 1872 and at the Columbia Law
School in 1876, and practised law in New York for five years. He was a
Democratic member of Congress from 1881 to 1889, serving in 1885-1887 as
chairman of the committee on foreign affairs. In 1889 he was United
States minister to Spain.
Another son, AUGUST BELMONT (1853- ), was born in New York on the 18th
of February 1853 and graduated at Harvard in 1875. He succeeded his
father as head of the banking house and was prominent in railway
finance, and in financing and building the New York subway. In 1904 he
was one of the principal supporters of Alton B. Parker for the
Democratic presidential nomination, and served as chairman of the
finance committee of the Democratic National Committee.
A volume entitled _Letters, Speeches and Addresses of August Belmont_
(the elder) was published at New York in 1890.
BELOIT, a city of Rock county, Wisconsin, U.S.A., situated on the S.
boundary of the state, on Rock river, about 91 m. N.W. of Chicago and
about 85 m. S.W. of Milwaukee. Pop. (1890) 6315; (1900) 10,436, of whom
1468 were foreign-born; (1910) 15,125. It is served by the Chicago &
North-Western, and the Chicago, Milwaukee & St Paul railways, and by an
inter-urban electric railway to Janesville, Wisconsin and Rockford,
Illinois. Beloit is attractively situated on high bluffs on both sides
of the river. The city is the seat of Beloit College, a co-educational,
non-sectarian institution, founded under the auspices of the
Congregational and Presbyterian churches in 1847, and having, in
1907-1908, 36 instructors and 430 students. It has classical,
philosophical (1874) and scientific (1892) courses; women were first
admitted in 1895. The Greek department of the college has supervised
since 1895 the public presentation nearly every year of an English
version of a Greek play. The river furnishes good water-power, and among
the manufactures are wood-working machinery, ploughs, steam pumps,
windmills, gas engines, paper-mill machinery, cutlery, flour, ladies'
shoes, cyclometers and paper; the total value of the factory product in
1905 was $4,485,224, 60.2% more than in 1900. Beloit, founded by New
Englanders in 1838, was chartered as a city in 1856.
BELOMANCY (from [Greek: belos], a dart, and [Greek: manteia], prophecy
or divination), a form of divination (q.v.) by means of arrows,
practised by the Babylonians, Scythians and other ancient peoples.
Nebuchadrezzar (Ezek. xxi. 21) resorted to this practice "when he stood
in the parting of the way ... to use divination: he made his arrows
bright."
BELON, PIERRE (1517-1564), French naturalist, was born about 1517 near
Le Mans (Sarthe). He studied medicine at Paris, where he took the degree
of doctor, and then became a pupil of the botanist Valerius Cordus
(1515-1544) at Wittenberg, with whom he travelled in Germany. On his
return to France he was taken under the patronage of Cardinal de
Tournon, who furnished him with means for undertaking an extensive
scientific journey. Starting in 1546, he travelled through Greece, Asia
Minor, Egypt, Arabia and Palestine, and returned in 1549. A full account
of his travels, with illustrations, was published in 1553. Belon, who
was highly favoured both by Henry II. and by Charles IX., was
assassinated at Paris one evening in April 1564, when coming through the
Bois de Boulogne. Besides the narrative of his travels he wrote several
scientific works of considerable value, particularly the _Histoire
naturelle des estranges poissons_ (1551), _De aquatilibus_ (1553), and
_L'Histoire de la nature des oyseaux_ (1555), which entitle him to be
regarded as one of the first workers in the science of comparative
anatomy.
BELPER, a market-town in the mid-parliamentary division of Derbyshire,
England, on the river Derwent, 7 m. N. of Derby on the Midland railway.
Pop. of urban district (1901), 10,934. The chapel of St John is said to
have been founded by Edmund Crouchback, second son of Henry III., about
the middle of the 13th century. There is an Anglican convent of the
Sisters of St Lawrence, with orphanage and school. For a considerable
period one of the most flourishing towns in the county, Belper owed its
prosperity to the establishment of cotton works in 1776 by Messrs
Strutt, the title of Baron Belper (cr. 1856), in the Strutt family,
being taken from the town. Belper also manufactures linen, hosiery, silk
and earthenware; and after the decline of nail-making, once an important
industry, engineering works and iron foundries were opened. The Derwent
provides water-power for the cotton-mills. John of Gaunt is said to have
been a great benefactor to Belper, and the foundations of a massive
building have been believed to mark the site of his residence. A chapel
which he founded is incorporated with a modern schoolhouse. The scenery
in the neighbourhood of Belper, especially to the west, is beautiful;
but there are collieries, lead-mines and quarries in the vicinity of the
town.
Belper (Beaurepaire) until 1846 formed part of the parish of Duffield,
granted by William I. to Henry de Ferrers, earl of Derby. There is no
distinct mention of Belper till 1296, when the manor was held by Edmund
Crouchback, earl of Lancaster, who is said to have enclosed a park and
built a hunting seat, to which, from its situation, he gave the name
Beaurepaire. The manor thus became parcel of the duchy of Lancaster and
is said to have been the residence of John of Gaunt. It afterwards
passed with Duffield to the Jodrell family. In a great storm in 1545, 40
houses were destroyed, and the place was scourged by the plague in 1609.