Encyclopaedia Britannica Volume 4, Slice 1 Part 5

On the 3rd of June 1865 Bizet married a daughter of his old master, Halevy. His second opera, _La Jolie Fitte de Perth_, produced at the Theatre Lyrique on 26th December 1867, was scarcely a step in advance.

The libretto was founded on Sir Walter Scott's novel, but the opera lacks unity of style, and its pages are marred by concessions to the vocalist. One number has survived, the characteristic Bohemian dance which has been interpolated into the fourth act of _Carmen_. In his third opera Bizet returned to an oriental subject. _Djamileh_, a one-act opera given at the Opera Comique on the 22nd of May 1872, is certainly one of his most individual efforts. Again were accusations of Wagnerism hurled at the composer's head, and _Djamileh_ did not achieve the success it undoubtedly deserved. The composer was more fortunate with the incidental music he wrote to Alphonse Daudet's drama, _L'Arlesienne_, produced in October 1872. Different numbers from this, arranged in the form of suites, have often been heard in the concert-room. Rarely have poetry and imagination been so well allied as in these exquisite pages, which seem to reflect the sunny skies of Provence.

Bizet's masterpiece, _Carmen_, was brought out at the Opera Comique on the 3rd of March 1875. It was based on a version by Meilhac and Halevy of a study by Prosper Merimee--in which the dramatic element was obscured by much descriptive writing. The detection of the drama underlying this psychological narrative was in itself a brilliant discovery, and in reconstructing the story in dramatic form the authors produced one of the most famous libretti in the whole range of opera.

Still more striking than the libretto was the music composed by Bizet, in which the peculiar use of the flute and of the lowest notes of the harp deserves particular attention.

On the 3rd of June, three months after the production of _Carmen_ in Paris, the genial composer expired after a few hours' illness from a heart affection. Before dying he had the satisfaction of knowing that _Carmen_ had been accepted for production at Vienna. After the Austrian capital came Brussels, Berlin and, in 1878, London, when _Carmen_ was brought out at Her Majesty's theatre with immense success. The influence exercised by Bizet on dramatic music has been very great, and may be discerned in the realistic works of the young Italian school, as well as in those of his own countrymen.

BJoRNEBORG (Finnish, _Pori_), a district town of Finland, province of bo-Bjorneborg, on the E. coast of the Gulf of Bothnia, at the mouth of the k.u.mo. Lat. 51 8' N., long. 46 0' E. Pop. (1904) 16,053, mostly Swedes. Large vessels cannot enter its roadstead, and stop at Rafso. The town has s.h.i.+pbuilding wharves, machine works, and several tanneries and brick-works, and has a total trade of over 16,000,000 marks, the chief export being timber.

BJoRNSON, BJoRNSTJERNE (1832-1910), Norwegian poet, novelist and dramatist, was born on the 8th of December 1832 at the farmstead of Bjorngen, in Kvikne, in osterdal, Norway. In 1837 his father, who had been pastor of Kvikne, was transferred to the parish of Noesset, in Romsdal; in this romantic district the childhood of Bjornson was spent. After some teaching at the neighbouring town of Molde, he was sent at the age of seventeen to a well-known school in Christiania to study for the university; his instinct for poetry was already awakened, and indeed he had written verses from his eleventh year. He matriculated at the university of Christiania in 1852, and soon began to work as a journalist, especially as a dramatic critic. In 1857 appeared _Synnove Solbakken_, the first of Bjornson's peasant-novels; in 1858 this was followed by _Arne_, in 1860 by _A Happy Boy_, and in 1868 by _The Fisher Maiden_. These are the most important specimens of his _bonde-fortaellinger_ or peasant-tales--a section of his literary work which has made a profound impression in his own country, and has made him popular throughout the world. Two of the tales, _Arne_ and _Synnove Solbakken_, offer perhaps finer examples of the pure peasant-story than are to be found elsewhere in literature.

Bjornson was anxious "to create a new saga in the light of the peasant,"

as he put it, and he thought this should be done, not merely in prose fiction, but in national dramas or _folke-stykker_. The earliest of these was a one-act piece the scene of which is laid in the 12th century, _Between the Battles_, was written in 1855, but not produced until 1857. He was especially influenced at this time by the study of Baggesen and Ochlenschlager, during a visit to Copenhagen 1856-1857.

_Between the Battles_ was followed by _Lame Hulda_ in 1858, and _King Sverre_ in 1861. All these efforts, however, were far excelled by the splendid trilogy of _Sigurd the b.a.s.t.a.r.d_, which Bjornson issued in 1862.

This raised him to the front rank among the younger poets of Europe. His _Sigurd the Crusader_ should be added to the category of these heroic plays, although it was not printed until 1872.

At the close of 1857 Bjornson had been appointed director of the theatre at Bergen, a post which he held, with much journalistic work, for two years, when he returned to the capital. From 1860 to 1863 he travelled widely throughout Europe. Early in 1865 he undertook the management of the Christiania theatre, and brought out his popular comedy of _The Newly Married_ and his romantic tragedy of _Mary Stuart in Scotland_.

Although Bjornson has introduced into his novels and plays songs of extraordinary beauty, he was never a very copious writer of verse; in 1870 he published his _Poems and Songs_ and the epic cycle called _Arnljot Gelline_; the latter volume contains the magnificent ode called "Bergliot," Bjornson's finest contribution to lyrical poetry. Between 1864 and 1874, in the very prime of life, Bjornson displayed a slackening of the intellectual forces very remarkable in a man of his energy; he was indeed during these years mainly occupied with politics, and with his business as a theatrical manager. This was the period of Bjornson's most fiery propaganda as a radical agitator. In 1871 he began to supplement his journalistic work in this direction by delivering lectures over the length and breadth of the northern countries. He possessed to a surprising degree the arts of the orator, combined with a magnificent physical prestige. From 1873 to 1876 Bjornson was absent from Norway, and in the peace of voluntary exile he recovered his imaginative powers. His new departure as a dramatic author began with _A Bankruptcy_ and _The Editor_ in 1874, social dramas of an extremely modern and realistic cast.

The poet now settled on his estate of Aulestad in Gausdal. In 1877 he published another novel, _Magnhild_--an imperfect production, in which his ideas on social questions were seen to be in a state of fermentation, and gave expression to his republican sentiments in the polemical play called _The King_, to a later edition of which he prefixed an essay on "Intellectual Freedom," in further explanation of his position. _Captain Mansana_, an episode of the war of Italian independence, belongs to 1878. Extremely anxious to obtain a full success on the stage, Bjornson concentrated his powers on a drama of social life, _Leonardo_ (1879), which raised a violent controversy. A satirical play, _The New System_, was produced a few weeks later.

Although these plays of Bjornson's second period were greatly discussed, none of them (except _A Bankruptcy_) pleased on the boards. When once more he produced a social drama, _A Gauntlet_, in 1883, he was unable to persuade any manager to stage it, except in a modified form, though this play gives the full measure of his power as a dramatist. In the autumn of the same year, Bjornson published a mystical or symbolic drama _Beyond our Powers_, dealing with the abnormal features of religious excitement with extraordinary force; this was not acted until 1899, when it achieved a great success.

Meanwhile, Bjornson's political att.i.tude had brought upon him a charge of high treason, and he took refuge for a time in Germany, returning to Norway in 1882. Convinced that the theatre was practically closed to him, he turned back to the novel, and published in 1884, _Flags are Flying in Town and Port_, embodying his theories on heredity and education. In 1889 he printed another long and still more remarkable novel, _In G.o.d's Way_, which is chiefly concerned with the same problems. The same year saw the publication of a comedy, _Geography and Love_, which continues to be played with success. A number of short stories, of a more or less didactic character, dealing with startling points of emotional experience, were collected in 1894; among them those which produced the greatest sensation were _Dust, Mother's Hands_, and _Absalom's Hair_. Later plays were a political tragedy called _Paul Lange and Tora Parsberg_ (1898), a second part of _Beyond our Powers_ (1895), _Laboremus_ (1901), _At Storhove_ (1902), and _Daglannet_ (1904). In 1899, at the opening of the National theatre, Bjornson received an ovation, and his saga-drama of _Sigurd the Crusader_ was performed.

A subject which interested him greatly, and on which he occupied his indefatigable pen, was the question of the _bonde-maal_, the adopting of a national language for Norway distinct from the _dansk-norsk_ (Dano-Norwegian), in which her literature has. .h.i.therto been written.

Bjornson's strong and sometimes rather narrow patriotism did not blind him to the fatal folly of such a proposal, and his lectures and pamphlets against the _maal-straev_ in its extreme form did more than anything else to save the language in this dangerous moment. Bjornson was one of the original members of the n.o.bel committee, and was re-elected in 1900. In 1903 he was awarded the n.o.bel prize for literature. Bjornson had done as much as any other man to rouse Norwegian national feeling, but in 1903, on the verge of the rupture between Norway and Sweden, he preached conciliation and moderation to the Norwegians. He was an eloquent advocate of Pan-Germanism, and, writing to the _Figaro_ in 1905, he outlined a Pan-Germanic alliance of northern Europe and North America. He died on the 26th of April 1910.

See Bjornson's _Samlede Vaerker_ (Copenhagen, 1900-1902, 11 vols.); _The Novels of Bjornstjerne Bjornson_ (1894, &c.), edited by Edmund Gosse; G. Brandes, _Critical Studies_ (1899); E. Tissot, _Le drame norvegien_ (1893); C.D. af Wirsen, _Kritiker_ (1901); Chr. Collin, _Bjornstjerne Bjornson_ (2 vols., German ed., 1903), the most complete biography and criticism at present available; and B. Halvorsen, _Norsk Forfatter Lexikon_ (1885). (E. G.)

BLACHFORD, FREDERIC ROGERS, BARON (1811-1889), British civil servant, eldest son of Sir Frederick Leman Rogers, 7th Bart. (whom he succeeded in the baronetcy in 1851), was born in London on the 31st of January 1811. He was educated at Eton and Oriel college, Oxford, where he had a brilliant career, winning the Craven University scholars.h.i.+p, and taking a double first-cla.s.s in cla.s.sics and mathematics. He became a fellow of Oriel (1833), and won the Vinerian scholars.h.i.+p (1834), and fellows.h.i.+p (1840). He was called to the bar in 1837, but never practised. At school and at Oxford he was a contemporary of W.E. Gladstone, and at Oxford he began a lifelong friends.h.i.+p with J.H. Newman and R.W. Church; his cla.s.sical and literary tastes, and his combination of liberalism in politics with High Church views in religion, together with his good social position and interesting character, made him an admired member of their circles. For two or three years (1841-1844) he wrote for _The Times_, and he helped to found _The Guardian_ in 1846; he also did a good deal to a.s.sist the Tractarian movement. But he eventually settled down to the life of a government official. He began in 1844 as registrar of joint-stock companies, and in 1846 became commissioner of lands and emigration. Between 1857 and 1859 he was engaged in government missions abroad, connected with colonial questions, and in 1860 he was appointed permanent under-secretary of state for the colonies. Sir Frederic Rogers was the guiding spirit of the colonial office under six successive secretaries of state, and on his retirement in 1871 was raised to the peerage as Baron Blachford of Wisdome, a t.i.tle taken from his place in Devons.h.i.+re. He died on the 21st of November 1889.

A volume of his letters, edited by G.E. Marindin (1896), contains an interesting Life, partly autobiographical.

BLACK, ADAM (1784-1874), Scottish publisher, founder of the firm of A. & C. Black, the son of a builder, was born in Edinburgh on the 20th of February 1784. After serving his apprentices.h.i.+p to the bookselling trade in Edinburgh and London, he began business for himself in Edinburgh in 1808. By 1826 he was recognized as one of the princ.i.p.al booksellers in the city; and a few years later he was joined in business by his nephew Charles. The two most important events connected with the history of the firm were the publication of the 7th, 8th and 9th editions of the _Encyclopaedia Brittannica_, and the purchase of the stock and copyright of the Waverley Novels. The copyright of the _Encyclopaedia_ pa.s.sed into the hands of Adam Black and a few friends in 1827. In 1851 the firm bought the copyright of the Waverley Novels for 27,000; and in 1861 they became the proprietors of De Quincey's works. Adam Black was twice lord provost of Edinburgh, and represented the city in parliament from 1856 to 1865. He retired from business in 1865, and died on the 24th of January 1874. He was succeeded by his sons, who removed their business in 1895 to London. There is a bronze statue of Adam Black in East Princes Street Gardens, Edinburgh.

See _Memoirs of Adam Black_, edited by Alexander Nicholson (2nd ed., Edinburgh, 1885).

BLACK, JEREMIAH SULLIVAN (1810-1883), American lawyer and statesman, was born in Stony Creek towns.h.i.+p, Somerset county, Pennsylvania, on the 10th of January 1810. He was largely self-educated, and before he was of age was admitted to the Pennsylvania bar. He gradually became one of the leading American lawyers, and in 1851-1857 was a member of the supreme court of Pennsylvania (chief-justice 1851-1854). In 1857 he entered President Buchanan's cabinet as attorney-general of the United States.

In this capacity he successfully contested the validity of the "California land claims"--claims to about 19,000 sq. m. of land, fraudulently alleged to have been granted to land-grabbers and others by the Mexican government prior to the close of the Mexican War. From the 17th of December 1860 to the 4th of March 1861 he was secretary of state. Perhaps the most influential of President Buchanan's official advisers, he denied the const.i.tutionality of secession, and urged that Fort Sumter be properly reinforced and defended. "For ... the vigorous a.s.sertion at last in word and in deed that the United States is a nation," says James Ford Rhodes, "for pointing out the way in which the authority of the Federal government might be exercised without infringing on the rights of the states, the grat.i.tude of the American people is due to Jeremiah S. Black." He became reporter to the Supreme Court of the United States in 1861, but after publis.h.i.+ng the reports for the years 1861 and 1862 he resigned, and devoted himself almost exclusively to his private practice, appearing in such important cases before the Supreme Court as the one known as _Ex-Parte Milligan_, in which he ably defended the right of trial by jury, the McCardle case and the _United States_ v. _Blyew et al_. After the Civil War he vigorously opposed the Congressional plan of reconstructing the late Confederate states, and himself drafted the message of President Johnson, vetoing the Reconstruction Act of the 2nd of March 1867. Black was also for a short time counsel for President Andrew Johnson, in his trial on the article of impeachment, before the United States Senate, and for William W. Belknap (1829-1890), secretary of war from 1869 to 1876, who in 1876 was impeached on a charge of corruption; and with others he represented Samuel J. Tilden during the contest for the presidency between Tilden and Hayes (see ELECTORAL COMMISSION). He died at Brockie, Pennsylvania, on the 19th of August 1883.

See _Essays and Speeches of Jeremiah S. Black, with a Biographical Sketch_ (New York, 1885), by his son, C.F. Black.

BLACK, JOSEPH (1728-1799), Scottish chemist and physicist, was born in 1728 at Bordeaux, where his father--a native of Belfast but of Scottish descent--was engaged in the wine trade. At the age of twelve he was sent to a grammar school in Belfast, whence he removed in 1746 to study medicine in Glasgow. There he had William Cullen for his instructor in chemistry, and the relation between the two soon became that of professor and a.s.sistant rather than of master and pupil. The action of lithontriptic medicines, especially lime-water, was one of the questions of the day, and through his investigations of this subject Black was led to the chemical discoveries a.s.sociated with his name. The causticity of alkaline bodies was explained at that time as depending on the presence in them of the principle of fire, "phlogiston"; quicklime, for instance, was chalk which had taken up phlogiston, and when mild alkalis such as sodium or pota.s.sium carbonate were causticized by its aid, the phlogiston was supposed to pa.s.s from it to them. Black showed that on the contrary causticization meant the loss of something, as proved by loss of weight; and this something he found to be an "air," which, because it was fixed in the substance before it was causticized, he spoke of as "fixed air." Taking _magnesia alba_, which he distinguished from limestone with which it had previously been confused, he showed that on being heated it lost weight owing to the escape of this fixed air (named carbonic acid by Lavoisier in 1781), and that the weight was regained when the calcined product was made to reabsorb the fixed air with which it had parted. These investigations, by which Black not only gave a great impetus to the chemistry of gases by clearly indicating the existence of a gas distinct from common air, but also antic.i.p.ated Lavoisier and modern chemistry by his appeal to the balance, were described in the thesis _De humore acido a cibis orto, et magnesia alba_, which he presented for his doctor's degree in 1754; and a fuller account of them was read before the Medical Society of Edinburgh in June 1753, and published in the following year as _Experiments upon magnesia, quicklime and some other alkaline substances_.

It is curious that Black left to others the detailed study of this "fixed air" he had discovered. Probably the explanation is pressure of other work. In 1756 he succeeded Cullen as lecturer in chemistry at Glasgow, and was also appointed professor of anatomy, though that post he was glad to exchange for the chair of medicine. The preparation of lectures thus took up much of his time, and he was also gaining an extensive practice as a physician. Moreover, his attention was engaged on studies which ultimately led to his doctrine of latent heat. He noticed that when ice melts it takes up a quant.i.ty of heat without undergoing any change of temperature, and he argued that this heat, which as was usual in his time he looked upon as a subtle fluid, must have combined with the particles of ice and thus become latent in its substance. This hypothesis he verified quant.i.tatively by experiments, performed at the end of 1761. In 1764, with the aid of his a.s.sistant, William Irvine (1743-1787), he further measured the latent heat of steam, though not very accurately. This doctrine of latent heat he taught in his lectures from 1761 onwards, and in April 1762 he described his work to a literary society in Glasgow. But he never published any detailed account of it, so that others, such as J.A. Deluc, were able to claim the credit of his results. In the course of his inquiries he also noticed that different bodies in equal ma.s.ses require different amounts of heat to raise them to the same temperature, and so founded the doctrine of specific heats; he also showed that equal additions or abstractions of heat produced equal variations of bulk in the liquid of his thermometers. In 1766 he succeeded Cullen in the chair of chemistry in Edinburgh, where he devoted practically all his time to the preparation of his lectures. Never very robust, his health gradually became weaker and ultimately he was reduced to the condition of a valetudinarian. In 1795 he received the aid of a coadjutor in his professors.h.i.+p, and two years later he lectured for the last time. He died in Edinburgh on the 6th of December 1799 (not on the 26th of November as stated in Robison's life).

As a scientific investigator, Black was conspicuous for the carefulness of his work and his caution in drawing conclusions. Holding that chemistry had not attained the rank of a science--his lectures dealt with the "effects of heat and mixture"--he had an almost morbid horror of hasty generalization or of anything that had the pretensions of a fully fledged system. This mental att.i.tude, combined with a certain lack of initiative and the weakness of his health, probably prevented him from doing full justice to his splendid powers of experimental research.

Apart from the work already mentioned he published only two papers during his life-time--"The supposed effect of boiling on water, in disposing it to freeze more readily" (_Phil. Trans._, 1775), and "An a.n.a.lysis of the waters of the hot springs in Iceland" (_Trans. Roy. Soc.

Ed._, 1794).

After his death his lectures were written out from his own notes, supplemented by those of some of his pupils, and published with a biographical preface by his friend and colleague, Professor John Robison (1739-1805), in 1803 as _Lectures on the Elements of Chemistry, delivered in the University of Edinburgh_.

BLACK, WILLIAM (1841-1898), British novelist, was born at Glasgow on the 9th of November 1841. His early ambition was to be a painter, but he made no way, and soon had recourse to journalism for a living. He was at first employed in newspaper offices in Glasgow, but obtained a post on the _Morning Star_ in London, and at once proved himself a descriptive writer of exceptional vivacity. During the war between Prussia and Austria in 1866 he represented the _Morning Star_ at the front, and was taken prisoner. This paper shortly afterwards failed, and Black joined the editorial staff of the _Daily News_. He also edited the _Examiner_, at a time when that periodical was already moribund. After his first success in fiction, he gave up journalism, and devoted himself entirely to the production of novels. For nearly thirty years he was successful in retaining the popular favour. He died at Brighton on the 10th of December 1898, without having experienced any of that reaction of the public taste which so often follows upon conspicuous successes in fiction. Black's first novel, _James Merle_, published in 1864, was a complete failure; his second, _Love or Marraige_ (1868), attracted but very slight attention. _In Silk Attire_ (1869) and _Kilmeny_ (1870) marked a great advance on his first work, but in 1871 _A Daughter of Heth_ suddenly raised him to the height of popularity, and he followed up this success by a string of favourites. Among the best of his books are _The Strange Adventures of a Phaeton_ (1872); _A Princess of Thule_ (1874); _Madcap Violet_ (1876); _Macleod of Dare_ (1878); _White Wings_ (1880); _Sunrise_ (1880); _Shandon Bells_ (1883); _Judith Shakespeare_ (1884); _White Heather_ (1885); _Donald Ross of Heimra_ (1891); _Highland Cousins_ (1894); and _Wild Eelin_ (1898). Black was a thoroughgoing sportsman, particularly fond of fis.h.i.+ng and yachting, and his best stories are those which are laid amid the breezy mountains of his native land, or upon the deck of a yacht at sea off its wild coast.

His descriptions of such scenery are simple and picturesque. He was a word-painter rather than a student of human nature. His women are stronger than his men, and among them are many wayward and lovable creatures; but subtlety of intuition plays no part in his characterization. Black also contributed a life of Oliver Goldsmith to the _English Men of Letters_ series.

BLACK APE, a sooty, black, short-tailed, and long-faced representative of the macaques, inhabiting the island of Celebes, and generally regarded as forming a genus by itself, under the name of _Cynopithecus niger_, but sometimes relegated to the rank of a subgenus of _Macacus_.

The nostrils open obliquely at some distance from the end of the snout, and the head carries a crest of long hair. There are several local races, one of which was long regarded as a separate species under the name of the Moor macaque, _Macacus maurus_. (See PRIMATES.)

BLACKBALL, a token used for voting by ballot against the election of a candidate for members.h.i.+p of a club or other a.s.sociation. Formerly white and black b.a.l.l.s about the size of pigeons' eggs were used respectively to represent votes for and against a candidate for such election; and although this method is now generally obsolete, the term "blackball"

survives both as noun and verb. The rules of most clubs provide that a stated proportion of "blackb.a.l.l.s" shall exclude candidates proposed for election, and the candidates so excluded are said to have been "blackballed"; but the ballot (q.v.) is now usually conducted by a method in which the favourable and adverse votes are not distinguished by different coloured b.a.l.l.s at all. Either voting papers are employed, or b.a.l.l.s--of which the colour has no significance--are cast into different compartments of a ballot-box according as they are favourable or adverse to the candidate.

BLACKBERRY, or BRAMBLE, known botanically as _Rubus fruticosus_ (natural order Rosaceac), a native of the north temperate region of the Old World, and abundant in the British Isles as a copse and hedge-plant. It is characterized by its p.r.i.c.kly stem, leaves with usually three or five ovate, coa.r.s.ely toothed stalked leaflets, many of which persist through the winter, white or pink flowers in terminal cl.u.s.ters, and black or red-purple fruits, each consisting of numerous succulent drupels crowded on a dry conical receptacle. It is a most variable plant, exhibiting many more or less distinct forms which are regarded by different authorities as sub-species or species. In America several forms of the native blackberry, _Rubus nigrobaccus_ (formerly known as _R.

villosus_), are widely cultivated; it is described as one of the most important and profitable of bush-fruits.

For details see F.W. Card in L.H. Bailey's _Cyclopedia of American Horticulture_ (1900).