sovereigns to assemble a council and put an end to the schism, but both Boniface and Benedict were averse to this

measure.

Boniface died at Rome in 1404, and was succeeded by Innocent VII. The church of Rome has ever since acknowledged Urban and Boniface and their successors as legitimate popes, and considered Clement and Benedict as anti-popes. [BENEDICT, ANTI-POPE.]

During his pontificate of nearly fifteen years Boniface was involved in the Italian wars of that turbulent period. He first favoured the claims of the Angevins to the throne of Naples, but afterwards recognised the more fortunate Ladislaus as king. Perugia and other towns of Umbria and the Marches acknowledged the pope as their suzerain in Boniface's time. Boniface is charged with being addicted to a worldly policy, having seized upon the ecclesiastical revenues for temporal purposes, and enriched his brothers and nephews.

BONIFACE, SAINT, a native of Devonshire, was born about A.D. 680. He became a monk, and resided for a time in a convent at Southampton, where he acquired reputation for learning and piety. When thirty-six years of age he set out for Rome, where he expressed to Pope Gregory II. his wish to preach the gospel to the heathen nations of Germany, where two of his countrymen, Wilfred and Willibrod, from Northumberland, as well as Kilian, an Irish bishop, had preceded him. The pope having sanctioned his vocation, Boniface joined Willibrod in Frisia, from whence he repaired to Thuringia, Franconia, and other parts of central Germany. There he found a strange mixture of idolatrous and Christian rites, and the people plunged in ignorance and barbarism. For more than thirty years he laboured in converting and civilizing the rude natives, and he well deserved the title which has been given him of 'the Apostle of Germany. He founded four cathedrals, Erfurt, Bonaberg, Aichstadt and Würzburg, with a school attached to each, and he established numerous monasteries both for monks and nuns. These monasteries were generally built upon uncultivated grounds, which were cleared and tilled by the new inmates, and thus agriculture kept pace with the diffusion of Christianity. The monastery of Fulda, founded by Sturm, one of Boniface's disciples, was the means of reclaiming a vast tract of ground which had been till then covered by forests. In discussing in our days the question of the use and abuse of monastic institutions, we ought not to overlook the fact, that monks were the great civilizers of modern Europe in the dark ages which followed the destruction of the Roman Empire. Boniface was made archbishop of Mainz, and metropolitan of all the new dioceses on the right bank of the Rhine. He sent for missionaries from Britain to assist him in his arduous task, and Willibald, Wunibald, Burchard, Lullus, Lebuin, Willihad, and the nuns Lioba, Thecla, Walberg and others, obeyed his summons. Boniface was supported by Carloman, and afterwards by Pepin, sons of Charles Martel, whose authority or influence extended over a considerable part of Germany. Without the protection of the Frank prince (he observes in one of his letters to his friends at Winchester) I could neither govern the people nor protect the priests and virgins consecrated to God; without his prohibitions, without the penalties which he denounces on those who refuse to obey me, vain would be the attempt in this country to abolish heathen ceremonies or idolatrous sacrifices.' (Epistola S. Bonifacii, quoted by Dunham in History of the Germanic Empire, vol. ii.) In reading the regulations of Boniface for the discipline of his flocks, we are enabled to judge of the low state of morality which he found in Germany, of the difficulties he had to encounter, not only on the part of the heathens, but from the converts themselves, and of the beneficial effects which his injunctions and example must have had on the people at large. In 755 Boniface again visited Frisia, a country still in great measure pagan. Having assembled a multitude of converts he pitched tents in a field for the purpose of giving them confirmation, when a band of heathens fell upon the encampment, and killed or dispersed the congregation. Boniface was among the killed. (Vita S. Bonifacii in Mabillon, tom. iv., and Dunham's History of the Germanic Empire.)

BONIFACIO, a town of Corsica, on the S. extremity of the island, facing the coast of Sardinia. It is a fortified town, has a good harbour, and about 3,000 inhabitants. The town is built on a hill which projects into the sea. Bonifacio was originally a colony of the Genoese in the 14th

century. The country near Bonifacio is one of the most fertile and pleasant districts of Corsica. It produces corn, fruit, and has good pastures. Bonifacio is 44 m. S.E. of Ajaccio, in 41° 23' N. lat. and 9° 10′ E. long.

BONIFA'CIO, STRAITS OF, divide Sardinia from Corsica. The narrowest part between Longosardo in Sardinia and the southernmost point of Corsica, E. of the town of Bonifacio, is about 10 m. wide. At the E. entrance of the Straits are several clusters of islands, the principal of which is the Island of Maddalena, belonging to Sardinia. Near the Corsican coast is the Island of Cavallo, and between that and Maddalena is Santa Maria, with several other islets and rocks, which make the Mediterranean sailors in general avoid passing through the Straits, unless they are compelled. The land on both sides of the Straits is mountainous. The islands in these Straits were noted for contraband trade during the maritime war in the time of Napoleon. BONIN, or ARZOBISPO ISLANDS, a group of islands in the North Pacific, lying about N. by E., extending from 27° 44′ N. lat., seen as far to the southward as 26° 30', and probably running much farther in that direction. In longitude the known portion is comprised between 143° and 144° E. long. The only account of them is from the visit of the Blossom in 1827; and Captain Beechey observes that they correspond so well with the description of a group called Yslas del Arzobispo in a work published many years ago at Manilla (Navigacion Especulativa y Pratica), as to leave no doubt of their being the same. They had been expunged from the chart all but three, called Los Volcanos, as Gore, Perouse, and Kruzenstern had passed to the N. and S. without seeing any other than these; but in 1823 they reappeared in Arrowsmith's map.

They consist of three distinct groups: the northern, called Parry's Group, are mostly small islands and rocks. The central, called Baily's Group, consists of larger islands, separated from each other by narrow and deep channels. In the southern group the islands appear to be still larger and higher, but of this portion little is known, as Captain Beechey had not time to examine them. It appears that in 1823 a whale-ship commanded by Mr. Coffin anchored among this southern group, and that Mr. C. gave his name to the port, and was the first who furnished any certain information concerning this archipelago.

The islands are of volcanic formation, and smoke is seen to issue from some of them: they are steep and high, and wooded to the shores. The coasts are steep and craggy: in many places basaltic columns of a grey or greenish hue appear, resembling the Giant's Causeway in miniature; olivine, hornblende, and chalcedony are found. The islands are surrounded with sharp rugged rocks, and often with coral reefs: the water around them is very deep. They are quite uninhabited, but at the time of the Blossom's visit two of the crew of a whaler which had been wrecked in Port Lloyd were living on one of the islands, and had got a piece of ground under cultivation. The rest of the crew had been taken off by another whaler, but these two preferred remaining. The islands abound in the cabbage and fan palms, the former of which is an excellent vegetable, areca, pandanus, tamanu of Otaheite, and various other trees: the sea also contains abundance of turtle, ray, eels, cray-fish, and a great variety of others, of the most beautiful colours. Of birds, there are brown herons, plover, rails, snipe, wood-pigeons, crows, and small birds; also a species of vampire bat, some of which measured three feet across the extended wings, with a body eight or nine inches in length. No quadrupeds were seen. islands are subject to earthquakes, and in winter to violent storms, in one of which (January, 1826) the water rose twelve feet in Port Lloyd. The currents about the islands run very strong, and principally to the northward.

The

The name Bonin, by which they are known on our maps, is derived from Japanese accounts of a group called Bon-in Sima; but setting aside the geographical inaccuracy of the position there assigned them, it appears from the description given by M. Abel Remusat, in the Journal des Savans, September, 1817, that these cannot be the same. appear to abound in good harbours, and are now frequently visited by whalers, who go to them for turtle, fish, and the cabbage palm. (Beechey's Voyage to the Pacific and Behring's Straits.)

They

BONN, one of the eleven minor circles of the circle of Cologne, which forms that part of the Rhenish provinces belonging to the crown of Prussia, which is designated 'the

province of Cleves, Juliers, and Berg.' It consists of a portion of the former possessions of the archbishops of Cologne, and contains within an area of about 105 square miles, 1 town, 58 villages, and 28 hamlets, 78 churches and other places of worship, 114 public buildings, and about 6800 private dwelling-houses. The Rhine, with the exception of the burgomastership of Vilich, which lies on the right bank of that river, is its eastern boundary. The soil is throughout productive, and favourable to the growth of all descriptions of grain; the average annual produce of which in good years is estimated at about 392,800 Berlin bushels, or 72,800 British imperial quarters. Wine and tobacco are also raised. The population, which was 35,202 in 1816, 38,952 in 1825, and 42,447 in 1831, is at present about 44,800. Exclusive of the chief town and university, the circle contains one gymnasium, and one Protestant and forty-four Roman Catholic national or elementary schools. In every forty inhabitants there is not more than about one Protestant. The burgomastership of Bonn, one of the nine into which the circle is divided, contains the town and university of the same name, a place of some antiquity, situated on a gentle eminence, in a pleasant and fertile country, on the left bank of the Rhine. In records of a remote date it was called Bunna, a word which Arndt derives from the Celtic Buhn,' a spot containing productive fields, pastures, and water-courses. Bonna became the head-quarters of the sixth Roman legion, and, according to Antoninus's 'Itinerary,' was afterwards kept up as one of the Roman strong-holds on the Rhine. It rose ultimately to be a place of some note, and was attached to the second of the Germanic provinces A.D. 70. According to Tacitus (Hist. iv. 20), the Roman troops under Herennius Gallus were defeated near Bonn by the Batavians under Claudius Civilis: the ditches of the place were filled with dead bodies, and numbers were slain during the confusion by the arrows of their brother combatants. Bonna and Novesium (or Neuss) are repeatedly mentioned in the subsequent account of the Batavian contest as places where the Roman generals mustered their forces. Bonn is less frequently alluded to after this time: it is affirmed by some, though scarcely on sufficient grounds, to have embraced Christianity in the 88th year of the Christian æra, in consequence of the preaching of Maternus, bishop of Cologne; and it is known that Helena, the mother of Constantine the Great, about the year 316 built the church in this town, on the site of which the Minster church was afterwards built. In the year 355 Bonn was destroyed by an irruption of German tribes, and in 359 was rebuilt by the Emperor Julian. Under the Frankish sovereigns it is said to have borne the name of Verona: in 755 Charlemagne crossed the Rhine at Bonn, in his second campaign against the Saxons; and in 881 it was almost ruined by the Normans. In 1240 it was surrounded with walls and a ditch by the archbishop of Cologne, who conferred a variety of immunities upon it: from the year 1320 it was the constant residence of the archbishops of Cologne. The Emperor Charles IV. was crowned here in 1346, about which time it had risen into sufficient importance to conclude a treaty of defensive alliance with Cologne and other towns on the Rhine, when it undertook to furnish an auxiliary force of 500 men. During the Thirty years' war Bonn was exposed to great sufferings and vicissitudes. In 1673 the French, who had possessed themselves of the place, were besieged in it by the prince of Orange and Montecuculi, and surrendered after a slight resistance having regained possession of it fifteen years afterwards, they extended and greatly strengthened its defences. In 1689 it was taken by Frederic III., elector of Brandenburg, after a three-months' siege; and in 1703 was captured by the duke of Marlborough, the operations of the siege having been conducted by the celebrated Marshal Coehorn. The fortifications were razed in 1717; and in 1777 Maximilian Frederic, elector of Cologne, founded the academy, which was enlarged into a university in 1784. This university was dissolved by the French, and remained in abeyance while they held Bonn in Napoleon's time, but was re-established upon a more extensive scale by the present king of Prussia, on the 18th October, 1818, the twentyfourth article of the act of the congress of Vienna having transferred it to him as part of the provinces of the Rhine. The town of Bonn has the Rhine for its eastern boundary it is skirted on the south by the former electoral palace, and on the north and west by the Minster church, and a succession of gardens which stretch as far as the

:

banks of the river. It has at present the appearance rather of a modern than of an antient town, and though it cannot be termed a well-built place, for several of the streets are narrow and ill-lighted, its appearance at a distance, with its white palace, now the university building, the steeples behind, and the gardens all round it, is cheerful and pleasing. The air is at times bleak and cold, in consequence of the currents occasioned by the heights that hang over its low site, which is placed at the point where the Rhine emerges from between those heights; the evaporation from the river also renders the atmosphere damp. Bonn forms a circular figure of nearly equal diameter from north to south and east to west: the distance from the Cologne to the Coblenz gate does not exceed ten or twelve minutes' moderate walk. It contains above 1100 houses, built in a substantial manner, twenty-nine public edifices, eight churches and chapels, nine mills and manufactories, five gates, and a population of about 12,000 (1789, 9560; 1800, 8833; 1811, 9167; 1823, 10,860; and 1828, 11,526), besides the garrison, and between 700 and 800 students. The inhabitants derive the principal means of their subsistence from the university, from their fields, gardens, and vineyards. The chief manufactures in the town are cottons, silks, and sulphuric acid. The buildings without the gate are on the increase, and so disposed, under the direction of a board of embellishment (Verschönerungscommission), as to be ornamental to the town. Among the open areas the market-place is the most spacious; but the square planted with trees next the Minster, and thence called the Minster square, is the finest. There is no public edifice in Bonn to be compared with the Minster or church of St. Cassius, an antient Gothic structure, probably of the twelfth or thirteenth century. In the interior is a bronze statue of St. Helena, kneeling at the feet of the cross, as well as basso rilievi in white marble, representing the birth and baptism of the Saviour. In the church of St. Remigius, there is a fine altarpiece in oils, in which Spielberg the painter has represented the baptism of Clovis, king of the Franks, by the patron saint. The town-hall, which is on one side of the marketplace, is a handsome edifice in the modern style, with a double flight of stone steps in front. Bonn has also a gymnasium; is the seat of the superior board of mines for the Rhenish possessions of Prussia, of two tribunals for civil and criminal affairs, and of a central department for taxes and crown revenues. Among other scientific associations it possesses an academy of naturalists, styled the Leopold-Caroline Academy' (which was first instituted at Schweinfurt in 1652, received extensive privileges from the emperors Leopold I. and Charles VII., was afterwards removed to Erlangen, and ultimately transferred to this place in 1818), and the society of the Lower Rhine for promoting the sciences of natural history and medicine. Upon the reestablishment of the university in the year 1818, FredericWilliam, the present king of Prussia, appropriated the electoral palace at the southern end of the town to academical purposes; in the rescript under which it was reopened his majesty expresses his expectation that the university will proceed in the spirit of the act for its endowment, and promote true piety, sound learning, and wholesome morals among the youth resorting to it for study." It received the title of the Rhenish University of FredericWilliam,' in the year 1828, and is composed of five faculties, Protestant theology, Roman Catholic theology, medicine, jurisprudence, and philosophy. There are attached to it forty professors in ordinary, and ten adjuncts (ausserordentliche Professoren), and four seminaries, viz., one for students of Protestant theology, and another for students of homiletic catechetical Protestant theology, a third for philological students, and a fourth for the natural sciences. It has a library of about 80,000 volumes, a medical institute for clinic, and another for poly-clinic, with which an establishment for the cure of invalid students is combined, a clinicum for surgery and diseases of the eye, another for obstetrics, an anatomical theatre and museum, a cabinet of surgical instruments, an agricultural institute, a botanical garden, a museum of natural history, geological collections, an apparatus for natural and experimental philosophy, a museum of antiquities, &c., and an observatory. At a distance of less than fifteen minutes' walk from the town lies the country residence of the former electors of Cologne, Clemensruhe, near the village of Poppelsdorf, which contains the collections in natural history, geology, &c., the chemical and

technological laboratory, the collections belonging to the Leopold-Caroline Academy, a gallery of paintings and engravings, and lecture-rooms, besides apartments for the accommodation or use of the officers and professors. The university opened in the autumn of 1818, with forty-five | students; at the close of 1826 they amounted to 1002; at that of 1829, to 925; but the numbers at the end of 1834 had declined to 887. There are five elementary schools in the town, as well as a free-school for 300 poor children, several private cabinets of coins, engravings, &c., an excellent library of scientific publications and a mineralogical collection attached to the board of mining, and several benevolent institutions. The agricultural institute, with an area of 120 acres devoted to its purposes, and a manufactory of earthenware and pottery, are likewise situated at Poppelsdorf. Bonn lies in 50° 44' N. lat., and 9° 44′ E. long.

BONNEFOY or BONFIDIUS, EDMUND, a writer on Oriental law, or law of the Eastern Empire, was born 20th October, 1536, at Chabeuil near Valence, in France. Having applied himself to the law, he was early appointed colleague to the celebrated Cujacius, in the chair of law, in the university of Valence, in which situation Cujacius thought so highly of his virtues, and also of his talents and acquirements, as in one of his works to declare that, were he on his death-bed, and asked, like Aristotle, to name his successor, he could name none but Bonnefoy. Bonnefoy was near being assassinated in the massacre of St. Bartholomew, and was only rescued from the fury of the people by his friend Cujacius. He then went to Geneva, where, having been appointed to a chair, he lectured three times a week on Oriental jurisprudence,-a chair for which he was eminently qualified by his knowledge of the languages, particularly Hebrew, Greek, and Latin. In 1573 he published Juris Orientalis libri tres, Imperatoria Constitutiones, &c. The Greek text was accompanied by a Latin translation by the author, and was meant to comprise the laws civil and ecclesiastical of the Eastern or Greek empire. The first book contains the constitutions of the emperors of the East, from Heraclius to Michael Palæologus; the second contains the decrees of the archbishops and patriarchs of Constantinople; and the third the decrees and letters of the other patriarchs and pontiffs. Bonnefoy died at Geneva, 8th February, 1574, being then about thirty-eight years of age. The historian De Thou, who studied under him, gives him an excellent character, calling him homo probus et simplex.' (De Thou, Hist. lib. 59; Verdier, Bibl. Française, tom. vi.; Senebier, Litt. Hist. de Genève, tom. ii. p. 7; M'Crie's Melv., vol. i. p. 45.)

BONNER, EDMUND, Bishop of London, died 1569. He was born at Hanley in Worcestershire, and according to tradition was the natural son of a priest named Savage by Elizabeth Frodsham, who afterwards married Edmund Bonner, a sawyer at Hanley. Strype, who wrote in 1721, asserts that he was the legitimate son of this Bonner, citing as his authority Baron Lechmon, whose ancestor had been an intimate friend and patron of the bishop. The opinion of Bonner's contemporaries was that Savage was his father. An epigram written on the picture of him in Fox's Acts and Monuments' whipping Thomas Hinshaw, says,

'Nomen nec matris, nec gerit ille patris, Qui patre Savago natus, falso que Bonerus Dicitur: hunc melius dixeris Orbilium,'

Yorkshire, of Ripple in Worcestershire, and of East Dereham in Norfolk, and a prebendary of St. Paul's. Much of this promotion was due to the favour of Cromwell, whose schemes for the reformation of religion Bonner promoted. In 1533 he was sent a second time to the pope, who was then at Marseilles, to appeal to a general council against Clement's decree of excommunication against Henry VIII. on account of the divorce; and Burnet says that "Bonner delivered the threatenings that he was ordered to make with so much vehemency and fury, that the pope talked of throwing him into a cauldron of melted lead, or burning him alive; and he, apprehending some danger, made his escape.' In 1538 he was made bishop of Hereford whilst he was on an embassy to Paris, and before his consecration he was translated to London and took his commission from the king in 1540.

Thus far Bonner not only concurred in, but zealously promoted the Reformation, and the separation from Rome. But when death had removed the despot whose ungovernable temper seems to have obtained submission even from men of virtue and of ordinary firmness, Bonner's compliance ceased; he protested against Cranmer's injunctions and homilies, and scrupled to take the oath of supremacy. For these offences he was committed to the Fleet, from which however upon submission he was soon after released. From this time Bonner was so negligent in all that related to the Reformation as to draw on himself, in two instances, the censure of the privy council; but as he had committed no offence which subjected him to prosecution, the council, according to the bad practice of those times, required him to do an act extraneous from his ordinary duties, knowing that he would be reluctant to perform it. They made him preach a sermon at Paul's Cross on four points. One of these Bonner omitted, and commissioners were accordingly appointed to try him, before whom he appeared seven days. At the end of October, 1549, he was committed to the Marshalsea, and deprived of his bishopric. What he said during his defence is characteristic of the man and of the times. Where I preached and affirmed the very true body and blood of our Saviour Jesus Christ to be in the sacrament of the altar the self-same in substance that was hanged and shed upon the cross, he (Hooper), like an ass (as he is an ass indeed), falsely changed and turned the word that into as, like an ass, saying that I had said as it hanged, and as it was shed upon the cross.' At another time he said to one of his accusers that he spake like a goose, and to another, that he spake like a woodcock.

After the death of Edward VI. Bonner was restored by Queen Mary. His first acts were to deprive the married priests in his diocese, and set up the mass in St. Paul's' before the queen's ordinance to that effect. It would be tedious to follow him in all the long list of executions for religion, which make the history of that reign a mere narrative of bloodshed. Fox enumerates 125 persons burnt in his diocese and through his agency during this reign; and a letter from him to Cardinal Pole (dated at Fulham, 26th December, 1556) is copied by Holinshed, in which Bonner justifies himself for proceeding to the condemnation of twenty-two heretics who had been sent up to him from Colchester. These persons were saved by the influence of Cardinal Pole, who checked Bonner's sanguinary activity.

When Queen Elizabeth succeeded to the throne, Bonner, with the other bishops, went to meet her at Highgate (19th November, 1558), who kneeling (says Stow) acknowledged their allegiance, which she very graciously accepted, giving to every of them her hand to kiss except Bishop Bonner, which she omitted for sundry severities in the time of his authority.'

In May, 1559, he was summoned before the privy council, and on the oath of supremacy being tendered, and his refusal to take it, he was deprived a second time of his bishopric and indicted for a præmunire. He escaped the penalties attached to this charge, but he was confined for the rest of his life to the Marshalsea, where he died on September 5th, 1569.

Soon afterwards we find Bonner chaplain to Henry VIII., incumbent of the livings of Blaydon and Cherry Burton in

was taken to the Marshalsea from the council where the oath had been administered to him, a man exclaimed-The Lord confound or else turn thy heart! Bonner answered The Lord send thee to keep thy breath to cool thy porridge."

After his deprivation a man called out to him- Good morrow, Bishop quondam : Farewell,' answered he, 'knave semper.'

Burnet says of him that he little understood divinity, but was a great master of the canon law, wherein he was excelled by very few in his time.

Besides the authorities quoted above, Wood's Athenae Oxonienses' and the Biographia Britannica' contain valuable notices of Bonner: the article in the latter is written with great care (Dr. Kippis's edition).

BONNET, a name applied, in permanent fortification, to a work consisting of two faces forming with each other a salient angle, on the plan. It was employed to cover the angle of a ravelin when the faces only of the latter were protected by tenaillons or lunettes: the fire from the bonnet defends the fronts and salient angles of the tenaillons, and the faces of the former work are reciprocally defended by those of the latter. [TENAILLON.] When the parapet about the salient angle of any work, as a bastion or ravelin, is raised above the general level of the faces of the work, the elevated part is now called a bonnet.

BONNET DE PRETRE was a term in field fortification, applied by the French engineers to an indented line of parapet having three salient points, on account of some supposed resemblance to the object from which it was named. [REDAN.]

BONNE TABLE, or BONNESTABLE, a small town in France, in the department of Sarthe, on a cross-road from Mortagne and Bellême to Le Mans, 17 miles N.E. of Le Mans, the capital of the department, and 110 S.W. of Paris, through Dreux and Bellême: in 48° 10' N. lat., and 0° 24' E. long. It was formerly called Malestable, as affording insufficient accommodation for travellers; but the former lords of the town having made it more populous and more secure, by surrounding it with walls, changed its designation to its present more favourable one. (Piganiol de la Force.) There is a castle, built in the fifteenth century by Jean D'Harcourt, flanked by round towers. The inhabitants in 1832 amounted to 3872 for the town, or 5803 for the whole commune. They manufacture druggets, cotton goods, and hosiery: the market is well supplied with grain and cattle. The corn-market appears to have been considerable in the early part of the last century.

BONNY, a river which falls into the Bight of Biafra, between 50 and 4° 30′ N. lat., and near 7° E. long. It was long considered a separate river, and is so represented on our maps. But it seems much more probable that it is one of the numerous branches into which the Quorra river divides on approaching the sea. At least it is certain that there is a water communication between it and the upper course of the Quorra. (Journal of the London Geographical Society, vol. ii.)

BONONCI'NI, GIOVANNI (a name which once rivalled Handel's, but is now chiefly known through the medium of Swift's epigram), was, according to conjecture, born about the year 1660 at Bologna, where his father, Giovanni-Maria, followed the profession of music, and in 1673 published a book, Il Musico Practico, from which we are inclined to infer that he was neither a very sound musician nor possessed of much good sense.

When the Italian opera, under the title of The Corporation of the Royal Academy of Music, was established in London by a party of nobility and gentry, who subscribed 50,000l. for the purpose, to which George I. as patron contributed 1000, the managers engaged Handel, then living at Cannons, Bononcini, who was sent for from Rome, and Ariosti, who came from Bologna, to compose for the theatre. Handel's productions displayed every great quality: Bononcini's were marked by tenderness and elegance, but wanted invention and vigour: Ariosti seems to have been a good musician without genius, whose name would soon have been consigned to oblivion but for his connexion with the other two. The first new work presented by the academy was Muzio Scævola, of which Ariosti, the senior of the three, furnished the first act, Bononcini the second, and Handel, as youngest of the party, the third. The comparative merits of the two last composers were judged, not by critical rules, but party feelings. Handel was patronised by the king, his rival had the support of the Marlborough family; and, strange as the fact appears, Handel was the favourite of the Tories, Bononcini of the Whigs. The public generally however were on the side of the former, who gained a complete ascendency and maintained it; but his

rival continued on the establishment till 1727, though he produced little, and then retired, after which he confined his services to the duchess of Marlborough, who had previously taken him into her family, and settled on him a pension of 500l. per annum. His imperious temper did not long permit him to enjoy his good fortune; and his disho nourable conduct in presenting to the Academy of Antient Music a madrigal as his own, though the composition of Lotti of Venice, completed his downfall in this country, which he quitted in 1733. He then went to reside in Paris, where he wrote much sacred music for the Chapelle du Roi, and at the peace of Aix-la-Chapelle was invited to Vienna by the emperor, to compose music for the rejoicings on that occasion.

The exact period of his decease does not appear, but it is supposed that he almost attained his hundredth year. For the King's Theatre he composed several operas, now entirely forgotten; and in 1721 he published a volume of Cantate e Duetti, dedicated to George I., at a subscription of two guineas, by which it is calculated that he gained 1000l. These are engraved on copper, and the rank, as well as number, of the subscribers shows by what patronage Bononcini was at first supported.

BONNYCASTLE, JOHN, late professor of mathematics at the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich, where he died May 15, 1821. He was born at Whitchurch in Buckinghamshire, and came to London early, where he married at the age of nineteen. His wife dying soon after their marriage, he became tutor to the sons of a nobleman, after which he resided at Euston in Northamptonshire, till he obtained a place at the Woolwich Academy, where he finally became professor. These particulars are all that we find in the periodical publications of the time of his death. He is stated to have been a good scholar, and much attached to poetry, particularly to Shakspeare.

Bonnycastle is known by a large number of excellent elementary works, which being still on sale, it is not necessary to enumerate. His Guide to Arithmetic' has long had a great circulation. His treatises on mensuration and astronomy are very good of their kind; but his Elements of Algebra (not the abridgment, but the work in two volumes, octavo, 1813) is a very excellent performance, and shows great knowledge of the state of the science. He does not enter much into principles, but his management of the mechanism of algebra, and his almost singular felicity in separating the most striking and powerful parts from the rest, render his work very useful to the reader.

Bonnycastle passes for the translator of Bossut's History of Mathematics,' but a correspondent of the Gentleman's Magazine,' for 1821, p. 482, states, as of his own knowledge, that he only wrote the preface, ard added the list of mathematicians at the end, the translation being by Mr. T. O. Churchill. His name however is prefixed to the work.

BONPLANDIA, a plant producing a kind of fever bark called Angostura. [GALIPEA.]

BONUS HENRICUS, a kind of weed, formerly supposed to possess medicinal properties. [CHENOPODIUM.]

BONZES is the name by which the priests of Buddha are usually designated in Japan. The form of the name in the Japanese language is bonsan, which word is supposed by Mr. B. H. Hodgson (Journal of the Royal Asiat. Soc., 1835, vol. ii. p. 293) to be a corruption of the Sanscrit bandya (vandya, laudable, deserving praise?) They go with their heads entirely shorn, whence they are often ironically called kami-naga, or 'long-haired men.' The highest in rank is the daïri, or spiritual sovereign of Japan, who resides at Miaco. Till towards the conclusion of the twelfth century (A.D. 1185) the power of the daïri in Japan was nearly absolute; since then the supreme government has become vested in the djogoun, or secular commander-in-chief of the empire, and the influence of the daïri in temporal affairs is now next to none, though he still continues to enjoy the honours of a merely nominal sovereignty. (Titsingh, Illustrations of Japan, translated by F. Schobert, London, 1822, 4to. pp. 3, 300, 301.)

The Bonzes are under a vow of celibacy, and form a large corporation of male and female ecclesiastics. They are divided into two sects, hostile to each other, and externally distinguished by the colour of their robes, the one dressing in black and the other in grey. They maintain their influence chiefly by the popular belief in the efficacy of their intercession for others by prayer. Once in every fortnight they deliver a public religious discourse in the temples,