5. The news of Beowulf's dear-bought victory is carried to the army.

Amid great lamentation, the hero's body is laid on the funeral pile and consumed. The treasures of the dragon's hoard are buried with his ashes; and when the great mound is finished, twelve of Beowulf's most famous warriors ride around it, celebrating the praises of the bravest, gentlest and most generous of kings. _The Hero._--Those portions of the poem that are summarized above--that is to say, those which relate the career of the hero in progressive order--contain a lucid and well-constructed story, told with a vividness of imagination and a degree of narrative skill that may with little exaggeration be called Homeric. And yet it is probable that there are few readers of Beowulf who have not felt--and there are many who after repeated perusal continue to feel--that the general impression produced by it is that of a bewildering chaos. This effect is due to the multitude and the character of the episodes. In the first place, a very great part of what the poem tells about Beowulf himself is not presented in regular sequence, but by way of retrospective mention or narration. The extent of the material thus introduced out of course may be seen from the following abstract. When seven years old the orphaned Beowulf was adopted by his grandfather king Hrethel, the father of Hygelac, and was regarded by him with as much affection as any of his own sons. In youth, although famed for his wonderful strength of grip, he was generally despised as sluggish and unwarlike. Yet even before his encounter with Grendel, he had won renown by his swimming contest with another youth named Breca, when after battling for seven days and nights with the waves, and slaying many sea-monsters, he came to land in the country of the Finns. In the disastrous invasion of the land of the Hetware, in which Hygelac was killed, Beowulf killed many of the enemy, amongst them a chieftain of the Hugas, named Daeghrefn, apparently the slayer of Hygelac. In the retreat he once more displayed his powers as a swimmer, carrying to his ship the armour of thirty slain enemies. When he reached his native land, the widowed queen offered him the kingdom, her son Heardred being too young to rule. Beowulf, out of loyalty, refused to be made king, and acted as the guardian of Heardred during his minority, and as his counsellor after he came to man's estate. By giving shelter to the fugitive Eadgils, a rebel against his uncle the king of the "Sweon" (the Swedes, dwelling to the north of the Gautar), Heardred brought on himself an invasion, in which he lost his life. When Beowulf became king, he supported the cause of Eadgils by force of arms; the king of the Swedes was killed, and his nephew placed on the throne. _Historical Value._--Now, with one brilliant exception--the story of the swimming-match, which is felicitously introduced and finely told--these retrospective passages are brought in more or less awkwardly, interrupt inconveniently the course of the narrative, and are too condensed and allusive in style to make any strong poetic impression. Still, they do serve to complete the portraiture of the hero's character. There are, however, many other episodes that have nothing to do with Beowulf himself, but seem to have been inserted with a deliberate intention of making the poem into a sort of cyclopaedia of Germanic tradition. They include many particulars of what purports to be the history of the royal houses, not only of the Gautar and the Danes, but also of the Swedes, the continental Angles, the Ostrogoths, the Frisians and the Heathobeards, besides references to matters of unlocalized heroic story such as the exploits of Sigismund. The Saxons are not named, and the Franks appear only as a dreaded hostile power. Of Britain there is no mention; and though there are some distinctly Christian passages, they are so incongruous in tone with the rest of the poem that they must be regarded as interpolations. In general the extraneous episodes have no great appropriateness to their context, and have the appearance of being abridged versions of stories that had been related at length in poetry. Their confusing effect, for modern readers, is increased by a curiously irrelevant prologue. It begins by celebrating the ancient glories of the Danes, tells in allusive style the story of Scyld, the founder of the "Scylding" dynasty of Denmark, and praises the virtues of his son Beowulf. If this Danish Beowulf had been the hero of the poem, the opening would have been appropriate; but it seems strangely out of place as an introduction to the story of his namesake. However detrimental these redundancies may be to the poetic beauty of the epic, they add enormously to its interest for students of Germanic history or legend. If the mass of traditions which it purports to contain be genuine, the poem is of unique importance as a source of knowledge respecting the early history of the peoples of northern Germany and Scandinavia. But the value to be assigned to _Beowulf_ in this respect can be determined only by ascertaining its probable date, origin and manner of composition. The criticism of the Old English epic has therefore for nearly a century been justly regarded as indispensable to the investigation of Germanic antiquities. The starting-point of all _Beowulf_ criticism is the fact (discovered by N.F.S. Grundtvig in 1815) that one of the episodes of the poem belongs to authentic history. Gregory of Tours, who died in 594, relates that in the reign of Theodoric of Metz (511-534) the Danes invaded the kingdom, and carried off many captives and much plunder to their ships. Their king, whose name appears in the best MSS. as Chlochilaicus (other copies read Chrochilaicus, Hrodolaicus, &c.), remained on shore intending to follow afterwards, but was attacked by the Franks under Theodobert, son of Theodoric, and killed. The Franks then defeated the Danes in a naval battle, and recovered the booty. The date of these events is ascertained to have been between 512 and 520. An anonymous history written early in the eighth century (_Liber Hist. Francorum_, cap. 19) gives the name of the Danish king as Chochilaicus, and says that he was killed in the land of the Attoarii. Now it is related in _Beowulf_ that Hygelac met his death in fighting against the Franks and the Hetware (the Old English form of Attoarii). The forms of the Danish king's name given by the Frankish historians are corruptions of the name of which the primitive Germanic form was Hugilaikaz, and which by regular phonetic change became in Old English _Hygelac_, and in Old Norse Hugleikr. It is true that the invading king is said in the histories to have been a Dane, whereas the Hygelac of Beowulf belonged to the "Geatas" or Gautar. But a work called _Liber Monstrorum_,[1] preserved in two MSS. of the 10th century, cites as an example of extraordinary stature a certain "Huiglaucus, king of the Getae," who was killed by the Franks, and whose bones were preserved on an island at the mouth of the Rhine, and exhibited as a marvel. It is therefore evident that the personality of Hygelac, and the expedition in which, according to _Beowulf_, he died, belong not to the region of legend or poetic invention, but to that of historic fact. This noteworthy result suggests the possibility that what the poem tells of Hygelac's near relatives, and of the events of his reign and that of his successor, is based on historic fact. There is really nothing to forbid the supposition; nor is there any unlikelihood in the view that the persons mentioned as belonging to the royal houses of the Danes and Swedes had a real existence. It can be proved, at any rate, that several of the names are derived from the native traditions of these two peoples. The Danish king Hrothgar and his brother Halga, the sons of Healf-dene, appear in the _Historia Danica_ of Saxo as Roe (the founder of Roskilde) and Helgo, the sons of Haldanus. The Swedish princes Eadgils, son of Ohthere, and Onela, who are mentioned in _Beowulf_, are in the Icelandic _Heimskringla_ called Adils son of Ottarr, and Ali; the correspondence of the names, according to the phonetic laws of Old English and Old Norse, being strictly normal. There are other points of contact between _Beowulf_ on the one hand and the Scandinavian records on the other, confirming the conclusion that the Old English poem contains much of the historical tradition of the Gautar, the Danes and the Swedes, in its purest accessible form. Of the hero of the poem no mention has been found elsewhere. But the name (the Icelandic form of which is Bjolfr) is genuinely Scandinavian. It was borne by one of the early settlers in Iceland, and a monk named Biuulf is commemorated in the _Liber Vitae_ of the church of Durham. As the historical character of Hygelac has been proved, it is not unreasonable to accept the authority of the poem for the statement that his nephew Beowulf succeeded Heardred on the throne of the Gautar, and interfered in the dynastic quarrels of the Swedes. His swimming exploit among the Hetware, allowance being made for poetic exaggeration, fits remarkably well into the circumstances of the story told by Gregory of Tours; and perhaps his contest with Breca may have been an exaggeration of a real incident in his career; and even if it was originally related of some other hero, its attribution to the historical Beowulf may have been occasioned by his renown as a swimmer. On the other hand, it would be absurd to imagine that the combats with Grendel and his mother and with the fiery dragon can be exaggerated representations of actual occurrences. These exploits belong to the domain of pure mythology. That they have been attributed to Beowulf in particular might seem to be adequately accounted for by the general tendency to connect mythical achievements with the name of any famous hero. There are, however, some facts that seem to point to a more definite explanation. The Danish king "Scyld Scefing," whose story is told in the opening lines of the poem, and his son Beowulf, are plainly identical with Sceldwea, son of Sceaf, and his son Beaw, who appear among the ancestors of Woden in the genealogy of the kings of Wessex given in the _Old English Chronicle_. The story of Scyld is related, with some details not found in _Beowulf_, by William of Malmesbury, and, less fully, by the 10th-century English historian Ethelwerd, though it is told not of Scyld himself, but of his father Sceaf. According to William's version, Sceaf was found, as an infant, alone in a boat without oars, which had drifted to the island of "Scandza." The child was asleep with his head on a _sheaf_, and from this circumstance he obtained his name. When he grew up he reigned over the Angles at "Slaswic." In _Beowulf_ the same story is told of Scyld, with the addition that when he died his body was placed in a ship, laden with rich treasure, which was sent out to sea unguided. It is clear that in the original form of the tradition the name of the foundling was Scyld or Sceldwea, and that his cognomen _Scefing_ (derived from _sceaf_, a sheaf) was misinterpreted as a patronymic. Sceaf, therefore, is no genuine personage of tradition, but merely an etymological figment. The position of Sceldwea and Beaw (in Malmesbury's Latin called Sceldius and Beowius) in the genealogy as anterior to Woden would not of itself prove that they belong to divine mythology and not to heroic legend. But there are independent reasons for believing that they were originally gods or demi-gods. It is a reasonable conjecture that the tales of victories over Grendel and the fiery dragon belong properly to the myth of Beaw. If Beowulf, the champion of the Gautar, had already become a theme of epic song, the resemblance of name might easily suggest the idea of enriching his story by adding to it the achievements of Beaw. At the same time, the tradition that the hero of these adventures was a son of Scyld, who was identified (whether rightly or wrongly) with the eponymus of the Danish dynasty of the Scyldings, may well have prompted the supposition that they took place in Denmark. There is, as we shall see afterwards, some ground for believing that there were circulated in England two rival poetic versions of the story of the encounters with supernatural beings: the one referring them to Beowulf the Dane, while the other (represented by the existing poem) attached them to the legend of the son of Ecgtheow, but ingeniously contrived to do some justice to the alternative tradition by laying the scene of the Grendel incident at the court of a Scylding king. As the name of Beaw appears in the genealogies of English kings, it seems likely that the traditions of his exploits may have been brought over by the Angles from their continental home. This supposition is confirmed by evidence that seems to show that the Grendel legend was popularly current in this country. In the schedules of boundaries appended to two Old English charters there occurs mention of pools called "Grendel's mere," one in Wiltshire and the other in Staffordshire. The charter that mentions the Wiltshire "Grendel's mere" speaks also of a place called _Beowan ham_ ("Beowa's home"), and another Wiltshire charter has a "Scyld's tree" among the landmarks enumerated. The notion that ancient burial mounds were liable to be inhabited by dragons was common in the Germanic world: there is perhaps a trace of it in the Derbyshire place-name Drakelow, which means "dragon's barrow." While, however, it thus appears that the mythic part of the Beowulf story is a portion of primeval Angle tradition, there is no proof that it was originally peculiar to the Angles; and even if it was so, it may easily have passed from them into the poetic cycles of the related peoples. There are, indeed, some reasons for suspecting that the blending of the stories of the mythic Beaw and the historical Beowulf may have been the work of Scandinavian and not of English poets. Prof. G. Sarrazin has pointed out the striking resemblance between the Scandinavian legend of Bodvarr Biarki and that of the Beowulf of the poem. In each, a hero from Gautland slays a destructive monster at the court of a Danish king, and afterwards is found fighting on the side of Eadgils (Adils) in Sweden. This coincidence cannot well be due to mere chance; but its exact significance is doubtful. On the one hand, it is possible that the English epic, which unquestionably derived its historical elements from Scandinavian song, may be indebted to the same source for its general plan, including the blending of history and myth. On the other hand, considering the late date of the authority for the Scandinavian traditions, we cannot be sure that the latter may not owe some of their material to English minstrels. There are similar alternative possibilities with regard to the explanation of the striking resemblances which certain incidents of the adventures with Grendel and the dragon bear to incidents in the narratives of Saxo and the Icelandic sagas. _Date and Origin._--It is now time to speak of the probable date and origin of the poem. The conjecture that most naturally presents itself to those who have made no special study of the question, is that an English epic treating of the deeds of a Scandinavian hero on Scandinavian ground must have been composed in the days of Norse or Danish dominion in England. This, however, is impossible. The forms under which Scandinavian names appear in the poem show clearly that these names must have entered English tradition not later than the beginning of the 7th century. It does not indeed follow that the extant poem is of so early a date; but its syntax is remarkably archaic in comparision with that of the Old English poetry of the 8th century. The hypothesis that _Beowulf_ is in whole or in part a translation from a Scandinavian original, although still maintained by some scholars, introduces more difficulties than it solves, and must be dismissed as untenable. The limits of this article do not permit us to state and criticize the many elaborate theories that have been proposed respecting the origin of the poem. All that can be done is to set forth the view that appears to us to be most free from objection. It may be premised that although the existing MS. is written in the West-Saxon dialect, the phenomena of the language indicate transcription from an Anglian (i.e. a Northumbrian or Mercian) original; and this conclusion is supported by the fact that while the poem contains one important episode relating to the Angles, the name of the Saxons does not occur in it at all. In its original form, _Beowulf_ was a product of the time when poetry was composed not to be read, but to be recited in the halls of kings and nobles. Of course an entire epic could not be recited on a single occasion; nor can we suppose that it would be thought out from beginning to end before any part of it was presented to an audience. A singer who had pleased his hearers with a tale of adventure would be called on to tell them of earlier or later events in the career of the hero; and so the story would grow, until it included all that the poet knew from tradition, or could invent in harmony with it. That _Beowulf_ is concerned with the deeds of a foreign hero is less surprising than it seems at first sight. The minstrel of early Germanic times was required to be learned not only in the traditions of his own people, but also in those of the other peoples with whom they felt their kinship. He had a double task to perform. It was not enough that his songs should give pleasure; his patrons demanded that he should recount faithfully the history and genealogy both of their own line and of those other royal houses who shared with them the same divine ancestry, and who might be connected with them by ties of marriage or warlike alliance. Probably the singer was always himself an original poet; he might often be content to reproduce the songs that he had learned, but he was doubtless free to improve or expand them as he chose, provided that his inventions did not conflict with what was supposed to be historic truth. For all we know, the intercourse of the Angles with Scandinavia, which enabled their poets to obtain new knowledge of the legends of Danes, Gautar and Swedes, may not have ceased until their conversion to Christianity in the 7th century. And even after this event, whatever may have been the attitude of churchmen towards the old heathen poetry, the kings and warriors would be slow to lose their interest in the heroic tales that had delighted their ancestors. It is probable that down to the end of the 7th century, if not still later, the court poets of Northumbria and Mercia continued to celebrate the deeds of Beowulf and of many another hero of ancient days. Although the heathen Angles had their own runic alphabet, it is unlikely that any poetry was written down until a generation had grown up trained in the use of the Latin letters learned from Christian missionaries. We cannot determine the date at which some book-learned man, interested in poetry, took down from the lips of a minstrel one of the stories that he had been accustomed to sing. It may have been before 700; much later it can hardly have been, for the old heathen poetry, though its existence might be threatened by the influence of the church, was still in vigorous life. The epic of Beowulf was not the only one that was reduced to writing: a fragment of the song about Finn, king of the Frisians, still survives, and possibly several other heroic poems were written down about the same time. As originally dictated, _Beowulf_ probably contained the story outlined at the beginning of this article, with the addition of one or two of the episodes relating to the hero himself--among them the legend of the swimming-match. This story had doubtless been told at greater length in verse, but its insertion in its present place is the work of a poet, not of a mere redactor. The other episodes were introduced by some later writer, who had heard recited, or perhaps had read, a multitude of the old heathen songs, the substance of which he piously sought to preserve from oblivion by weaving it in an abridged form, into the texture of the one great poem which he was transcribing. The Christian passages, which are poetically of no value, are evidently of literary origin, and may be of any date down to that of the extant MS. The curious passage which says that the subjects of Hrothgar sought deliverance from Grendel in prayer at the temple of the Devil, "because they knew not the true God," must surely have been substituted for a passage referring sympathetically to the worship of the ancient gods. An interesting light on the history of the written text seems to be afforded by the phenomena of the existing MS. The poem is divided into numbered sections, the length of which was probably determined by the size of the pieces of parchment of which an earlier exemplar consisted. Now the first fifty-two lines, which are concerned with Scyld and his son Beowulf, stand outside this numbering. It may reasonably be inferred that there once existed a written text of the poem that did not include these lines. Their substance, however, is clearly ancient. Many difficulties will be obviated if we may suppose that this passage is the beginning of a different poem, the hero of which was not Beowulf the son of Ecgtheow, but his Danish namesake. It is true that Beowulf the Scylding is mentioned at the beginning of the first numbered section; but probably the opening lines of this section have undergone alteration in order to bring them into connexion with the prefixed matter. BIBLIOGRAPHY.--The volume containing the _Beowulf_ MS. (then, as now, belonging to the Cottonian collection, and numbered "Vitellius A. xv.") was first described by Humphrey Wanley in 1705, in his catalogue of MSS., published as vol. iii. of G. Hickes's _Thesaurus Veterum Linguarum Septentrionalium_. In 1786 G.J. Thorkelin, an Icelander, made or procured two transcripts of the poem, which are still preserved in the Royal Library at Copenhagen, and are valuable for the criticism of the text, the MS. having subsequently become in places less legible. Thorkelin's edition (1815) is of merely historic interest. The first edition showing competent knowledge of the language was produced in 1833 by J.M. Kemble. Since then editions have been very numerous. The text of the poem was edited by C.W.M. Grein in his _Bibliothek der angelsachsischen Poesie_ (1857), and again separately in 1867. Autotypes of the MS. with transliteration by Julius Zupitza, were issued by the Early English Text Society in 1882. The new edition of Grein's _Bibliothek_, by R.P. Wulker, vol. i. (1883), contains a revised text with critical notes. The most serviceable separate editions are those of M. Heyne (7th ed., revised by A. Socin, 1903), A.J. Wyatt (with English notes and glossary, 1898), and F. Holthausen (vol. i., 1905). Eleven English translations of the poem have been published (see C.B. Tinker, _The Translations of Beowulf_, 1903). Among these may be mentioned those of J.M. Garnett (6th ed., 1900), a literal rendering in a metre imitating that of the original; J. Earle (1892) in prose; W. Morris (1895) in imitative metre, and almost unintelligibly archaistic in diction; and C.B. Tinker (1902) in prose. For the bibliography of the earlier literature on _Beowulf_, and a detailed exposition of the theories therein advocated, see R.P. Wulker, _Grundriss der angelsachsischen Litteratur_ (1882). The views of Karl Mullenhoff, which, though no longer tenable as a whole, have formed the basis of most of the subsequent criticism, may be best studied in his posthumous work, _Beovulf, Untersuchungen uber das angelsachsische Epos_ (1889). Much valuable matter may be found in B. ten Brink, _Beowulf, Untersuchungen_ (1888). The work of G. Sarrazin, _Beowulf-studien_ (1888), which advocates the strange theory that _Beowulf_ is a translation by Cynewulf of a poem by the Danish singer Starkadr, contains, amid much that is fanciful, not a little that deserves careful consideration. The many articles by E. Sievers and S. Bugge, in _Beitradge zur Geschichte der deutschen Sprache und Litteratur_ and other periodicals, are of the utmost importance for the textual criticism and interpretation of the poem. (H. Br.) FOOTNOTE: [1] Printed in Berger de Xivrey, _Traditions Teratologiques_ (1836), from a MS. in private hands. Another MS., now at Wolfenbuttel, reads "Hunglacus" for Huiglaucus, and (ungrammatically) "gentes" for _Getis_. BEQUEST (from O. Eng. _becwethan_, to declare or express in words; cf. "quoth"), the disposition of property by will. Strictly, "bequest" is used of personal, and "devise" of real property. (See LEGACY; WILL OR TESTAMENT.) BERAIN, JEAN (1638-1711), known as "the Elder," Belgian draughtsman and designer, painter and engraver of ornament, was born in 1638 or 1639 at Saint Mihiel (Meuse) and died in Paris on the 24th of January 1711. In 1674 he was appointed _dessinateur de la chambre et du cabinet de Roi_, in succession to Gissey, whose pupil he is believed to have been. From 1677 onward he had apartments, near to those of Andre Charles Boulle (q.v.), for whom he made many designs, in the Louvre, where he died. After the death of Le Brun he was commissioned to compose and supervise the whole of the exterior decoration of the king's ships. Without possessing great originality he was inventive and industrious, and knew so well how to assimilate the work of those who had preceded him (especially Raffaelle's arabesques) and to adapt it to the taste of the time that his designs became the rage. He furnished designs for the decorations and costumes used in the opera performances, for court festivals, and for public solemnities such as funeral processions, and inspired the ornamentations of rooms and of furniture to such an extent that a French writer says that nothing was done during his later years which he had not designed, or at least which was not in his manner. He was, in fact, the oracle of taste and the supreme pontiff whose fiat was law in all matters of decoration. His numerous designs were for the most part engraved under his own superintendence, and a collection of them was published in Paris in 1711 by his son-in-law, Thuret, clockmaker to the king. There are three books, _Oeuvre de J. Berain, Ornements inventes par J. Berain_ and _Oeuvres de J. Berain contenant des ornements d'architecture_. His earliest known works show him as engraver--twelve plates in the collection of _Diverses pieces de serrurerie inventees par Hughes Brisville el gravees par Jean Berain_ (Paris, 1663), and in 1667 ten plates of designs for the use of gunsmiths. M. Guilmard in _Les Maitres ornemanistes_, gives a complete list of his published works. His son JEAN BERAIN, "the Younger" (1678-1726), was born in Paris, where he also died. He was his father's pupil, and exercised the same official functions after his death. Thus he planned the funeral ceremonies at St Denis on the death of the dauphin, and afterwards made the designs for the obsequies of Louis XIV. He is perhaps best known as an engraver. He engraved eleven plates of the collection _Ornements de peinture et de sculpture qui sont dans la galerie d'Apollon au chasteau du Louvre, et dans le grand appartement du roy au palais des Tuileries_ (Paris, 1710), which have been wrongly attributed to his father, the _Mausolei du duc de Bourgogne_, and that of _Marie-Louise Gabrielle de Savoie, reine d'Espagne_ (1714), &c. His work is exceedingly difficult to distinguish from his father's, the similarity of style being remarkable. CLAUDE BERAIN, brother of the elder Jean, was still living in 1726. He was engraver to the king, and executed a good number of plates of ornament and arabesque of various kinds, some of which are included in his more distinguished brother's works. (J. P. B.) BERANGER, PIERRE JEAN DE (1780-1857), French song-writer, was born in Paris on the 19th of August 1780. The aristocratic _de_ was a piece of groundless vanity on the part of his father, who had assumed the name of Beranger de Mersix. He was descended in truth from a country innkeeper on the one side, and, on the other, from a tailor in the rue Montorgueil. Of education, in the narrower sense, he had but little. From the roof of his first school he beheld the capture of the Bastille, and this stirring memory was all that he acquired. Later on he passed some time in a school at Peronne, founded by one Bellenglise on the principles of Rousseau, where the boys were formed into clubs and regiments, and taught to play solemnly at politics and war. Beranger was president of the club, made speeches before such members of Convention as passed through Peronne, and drew up addresses to Tallien or Robespierre at Paris. In the meanwhile he learned neither Greek nor Latin--not even French, it would appear; for it was after he left school, from the printer Laisney, that he acquired the elements of grammar. His true education was of another sort. In his childhood, shy, sickly and skilful with his hands, as he sat at home alone to carve cherry stones, he was already forming for himself those habits of retirement and patient elaboration which influenced the whole tenor of his life and the character of all that he wrote. At Peronne he learned of his good aunt to be a stout republican; and from the doorstep of her inn, on quiet evenings, he would listen to the thunder of the guns before Valenciennes, and fortify himself in his passionate love of France and distaste for all things foreign. Although he could never read Horace save in a translation, he had been educated on _Telemaque_, Racine and the dramas of Voltaire, and taught, from a child, in the tradition of all that is highest and most correct in French. After serving his aunt for some time in the capacity of waiter, and passing some time also in the printing-office of one Laisney, he was taken to Paris by his father. Here he saw much low speculation, and many low royalist intrigues. In 1802, in consequence of a distressing quarrel, he left his father and began life for himself in the garret of his ever memorable song. For two years he did literary hackwork, when he could get it, and wrote pastorals, epics and all manner of ambitious failures. At the end of that period (1804) he wrote to Lucien Bonaparte, enclosing some of these attempts. He was then in bad health, and in the last state of misery. His watch was pledged. His wardrobe consisted of one pair of boots, one greatcoat, one pair of trousers with a hole in the knee, and "three bad shirts which a friendly hand wearied itself in endeavouring to mend." The friendly hand was that of Judith Frere, with whom he had been already more or less acquainted since 1796, and who continued to be his faithful companion until her death, three months before his own, in 1857. She must not be confounded with the Lisette of the songs; the pieces addressed to her (_La Bonne Vieille, Maudit printemps_, &c.) are in a very different vein. Lucien Bonaparte interested himself in the young poet, transferred to him his own pension of 1000 francs from the Institute, and set him to work on a _Death of Nero_. Five years later, through the same patronage, although indirectly, Beranger became a clerk in the university at a salary of another thousand. Meanwhile he had written many songs for convivial occasions, and "to console himself under all misfortunes"; some, according to M. Boiteau, had been already published by his father, but he set no great store on them himself; and it was only in 1812, while watching by the sick-bed of a friend, that it occurred to him to write down the best he could remember. Next year he was elected to the _Caveau Moderne_, and his reputation as a song-writer began to spread. Manuscript copies of _Les Gueux, Le Senateur_, above all, of _Le Roi d'Yvetot_, a satire against Napoleon, whom he was to magnify so much in the sequel, passed from hand to hand with acclamation. It was thus that all his best works went abroad; one man sang them to another over all the land of France. He was the only poet of modern times who could altogether have dispensed with printing. His first collection escaped censure. "We must pardon many things to the author of _Le Roi d'Yvetot_," said Louis XVIII. The second (1821) was more daring. The apathy of the Liberal camp, he says, had convinced him of the need for some bugle call of awakening. This publication lost him his situation in the university, and subjected him to a trial, a fine of 500 francs and an imprisonment of three months. Imprisonment was a small affair for Beranger. At Sainte Pelagie he occupied a room (it had just been quitted by Paul Louis Courier), warm, well furnished, and preferable in every way to his own poor lodging, where the water froze on winter nights. He adds, on the occasion of his second imprisonment, that he found a certain charm in this quiet, claustral existence, with its regular hours and long evenings alone over the fire. This second imprisonment of nine months, together with a fine and expenses amounting to 1100 francs, followed on the appearance of his fourth collection. The government proposed through Laffitte that, if he would submit to judgment without appearing or making defences, he should only be condemned in the smallest penalty. But his public spirit made him refuse the proposal; and he would not even ask permission to pass his term of imprisonment in a _Maison de sante_, although his health was more than usually feeble at the time. "When you have taken your stand in a contest with government, it seems to me," he wrote, "ridiculous to complain of the blows it inflicts on you, and impolitic to furnish it with any occasion of generosity." His first thought in La Force was to alleviate the condition of the other prisoners. In the revolution of July he took no inconsiderable part. Copies of his song, _Le Vieux Drapeau_, were served out to the insurgent crowd. He had been for long the intimate friend and adviser of the leading men; and during the decisive week his counsels went a good way towards shaping the ultimate result. "As for the republic, that dream of my whole life," he wrote in 1831, "I did not wish it should be given to us a second time unripe." Louis Philippe, hearing how much the song-writer had done towards his elevation, expressed a wish to see and speak with him; but Beranger refused to present himself at court, and used his favour only to ask a place for a friend, and a pension for Rouget de l'Isle, author of the famous _Marseillaise_, who was now old and poor, and whom he had been already succouring for five years. In 1848, in spite of every possible expression of his reluctance, he was elected to the Constituent Assembly, and that by so large a number of votes (204,471) that he felt himself obliged to accept the seat. Not long afterwards, and with great difficulty, he obtained leave to resign. This was the last public event of Beranger's life. He continued to polish his songs in retirement, visited by nearly all the famous men of France. He numbered among his friends Chateaubriand, Thiers, Jacques Laffitte, Michelet, Lamennais, Mignet. Nothing could exceed the amiability of his private character; so poor a man has rarely been so rich in good actions; he was always ready to receive help from his friends when he was in need, and always forward to help others. His correspondence is full of wisdom and kindness, with a smack of Montaigne, and now and then a vein of pleasantry that will remind the English reader of Charles Lamb. He occupied some of his leisure in preparing his own memoirs, and a certain treatise on _Social and Political Morality_, intended for the people, a work he had much at heart, but judged at last to be beyond his strength. He died on the 16th July 1857. It was feared that his funeral would be the signal for some political disturbance; but the government took immediate measures, and all went quietly. The streets of Paris were lined with soldiers and full of townsfolk, silent and uncovered. From time to time cries arose:--"_Honneur, honneur a Beranger!_" The songs of Beranger would scarcely be called songs in England. They are elaborate, written in a clear and sparkling style, full of wit and incision. It is not so much for any lyrical flow as for the happy turn of the phrase that they claim superiority. Whether the subject be gay or serious, light or passionate, the medium remains untroubled. The special merits of the songs are merits to be looked for rather in English prose than in English verse. He worked deliberately, never wrote more than fifteen songs a year and often less, and was so fastidious that he has not preserved a quarter of what he finished. "I am a good little bit of a poet," he says himself, "clever in the craft, and a conscientious worker to whom old airs and a modest choice of subjects (_le coin ou je me suis confine_) have brought some success." Nevertheless, he makes a figure of importance in literary history. When he first began to cultivate the _chanson_, this minor form lay under some contempt, and was restricted to slight subjects and a humorous guise of treatment. Gradually he filled these little chiselled toys of verbal perfection with ever more and more of sentiment. From a date comparatively early he had determined to sing for the people. It was for this reason that he fled, as far as possible, the houses of his influential friends and came back gladly to the garret and the street corner. Thus it was, also, that he came to acknowledge obligations to Emile Debraux, who had often stood between him and the masses as interpreter, and given him the key-note of the popular humour. Now, he had observed in the songs of sailors, and all who labour, a prevailing tone of sadness; and so, as he grew more masterful in this sort of expression, he sought more and more after what is deep, serious and constant in the thoughts of common men. The evolution was slow; and we can see in his own works examples of every stage, from that of witty indifference in fifty pieces of the first collection, to that of grave and even tragic feeling in _Les Souvenirs du peuple_ or _Le Vieux Vagabond_. And this innovation involved another, which was as a sort of prelude to the great romantic movement. For the _chanson_, as he says himself, opened up to him a path in which his genius could develop itself at ease; he escaped, by this literary postern, from strict academical requirements, and had at his disposal the whole dictionary, four-fifths of which, according to La Harpe, were forbidden to the use of more regular and pretentious poetry. If he still kept some of the old vocabulary, some of the old imagery, he was yet accustoming people to hear moving subjects treated in a manner more free and simple than heretofore; so that his was a sort of conservative reform, preceding the violent revolution of Victor Hugo and his army of uncompromising romantics. He seems himself to have had glimmerings of some such idea; but he withheld his full approval from the new movement on two grounds:--first, because the romantic school misused somewhat brutally the delicate organism of the French language; and second, as he wrote to Sainte-Beuve in 1832, because they adopted the motto of "Art for art," and set no object of public usefulness before them as they wrote. For himself (and this is the third point of importance) he had a strong sense of political responsibility. Public interest took a far higher place in his estimation than any private passion or favour. He had little toleration for those erotic poets who sing their own loves and not the common sorrows of mankind, "who forget," to quote his own words, "forget beside their mistress those who labour before the Lord." Hence it is that so many of his pieces are political, and so many, in the later times at least, inspired with a socialistic spirit of indignation and revolt. It is by this socialism that he becomes truly modern and touches hands with Burns. AUTHORITIES.--_Ma biographie_ (his own memoirs) (1858); _Vie de Beranger_, by Paul Boiteau (1861); _Correspondance de Beranger_, edited by Paul Boiteau (4 vols., 1860); _Beranger et Lamennais_, by Napoleon Peyrat (1857); _Quarante-cinq lettres de Beranger publiees par Madame Louise Colet_ (almost worthless) (1857); _Beranger, ses amis, ses ennemis et ses critiques_, by A. Arnould (2 vols., 1864); J. Janin, _Beranger et son temps_ (2 vols., 1866); also Sainte-Beuve's _Portraits contemporains_, vol. i.; J. Carson, _Beranger et la legende napoleonienne_ (1897) A bibliography of Beranger's works was published by Jules Brivois in 1876. (R. L. S.) BERAR, known also as the HYDERABAD ASSIGNED DISTRICTS, formerly a province administered on behalf of the nizam of Hyderabad by the British government, but since the 1st of October 1903 under the administration of the commissioner-general for the Central Provinces (q.v.). The origin of the name Berar is not known, but may perhaps be a corruption of Vidarbha, the name of a kingdom in the Deccan of which, in the period of the Mahabharata, Berar probably formed part. The history of Berar belongs generally to that of the Deccan, the country falling in turn under the sway of the various dynasties which successively ruled in southern India, the first authentic records showing it to have been part of the Andhra or Satavahana empire. On the final fall of the Chalukyas in the 12th century, Berar came under the sway of the Yadavas of Deogiri, and remained in their possession till the Mussulman invasions at the end of the 13th century. On the establishment of the Bahmani dynasty in the Deccan (1348) Berar was constituted one of the four provinces into which their kingdom was divided, being governed by great nobles, with a separate army. The perils of this system becoming apparent, the province was divided (1478 or 1479) into two separate governments, named after their capitals Gawil and Mahur. The Bahmani dynasty was, however, already tottering to its fall; and in 1490 Imad-ul-Mulk, governor of Gawil, who had formerly held all Berar, proclaimed his independence and proceeded to annex Mahur to his new kingdom. Imad-ul-Mulk was by birth a Kanarese Hindu, but had been captured as a boy in one of the expeditions against Vijayanagar and reared as a Mussulman. He died in 1504 and his direct descendants held the sultanate of Berar until 1561, when Burhan Imad Shah was deposed by his minister Tufal Khan, who assumed the kingship. This gave a pretext for the intervention of Murtaza Nizam Shah of Ahmednagar, who in 1572 invaded Berar, imprisoned and put to death Tufal Khan, his son Shams-ul-Mulk, and the ex-king Burhan, and annexed Berar to his own dominions. In 1595 Sultan Murad, son of the emperor Akbar, besieged Ahmednagar, and was bought off by the formal cession of Berar. Murad, founding the city of Shahpur, fixed his seat at Berar, and after his death in 1598, and the conquest of the Deccan by Akbar, the province was united with Ahmednagar and Khandesh under the emperor's fifth son, Daniyal (d. 1605), as governor. After Akbar's death (1605) Berar once more became independent under the Abyssinian Malik Ambar (d. 1626), but in the first year of Shah Jahan's reign it was again brought under the sway of the Mogul empire. Towards the close of the 17th century the province began to be overrun by the Mahrattas, and in 1718 the Delhi government formally recognized their right to levy blackmail (_chauth_) on the unhappy population. In 1724 the Nizam-ul-Mulk Asaf Jah established the independent line of the nizams of Hyderabad, and thenceforth the latter claimed to be _de jure_ sovereigns of Berar, with exception of certain districts (Mehkar, Umarkhed, &c.) ceded to the peshwa in 1760 and 1795. The claim was contested by the Bhonsla rajas, and for more than half a century the miserable country was ground between the upper and the nether millstone. This condition of things was ended by Wellesley's victories at Assaye and Argaon (1803), which forced the Bhonsla raja to cede his territories west of the Wardha, Gawilgarh and Narnala. By the partition treaty of Hyderabad (1804) these ceded territories in Berar were transferred to the nizam, together with some tracts about Sindkhed and Jalna which had been held by Sindhia. By a treaty of 1822, which extinguished the Mahratta right to levy _chauth_, the Wardha river was fixed as the eastern boundary of Berar, the Melghat and adjoining districts in the plains being assigned to the nizam in exchange for the districts east of the Wardha held by the peshwa. Though Berar was no longer oppressed by its Mahratta taskmasters nor harried by Pindari and Bhil raiders, it remained long a prey to the turbulent elements let loose by the sudden cessation of the wars. From time to time bands of soldiery, whom the government was powerless to control, scoured the country, and rebellion succeeded rebellion till 1859, when the last fight against open rebels took place at Chichamba near Risod. Meanwhile the misery of the country was increased by the reckless raising of loans by the nizam's government and the pledging of the revenues to a succession of great farmers-general. At last the British government had to intervene effectively, and in 1853 a new treaty was signed with the nizam, under which the Hyderabad contingent was to be maintained by the British government, while for the pay of this force and in satisfaction of other claims, certain districts were "assigned" to the East India Company. It was these "Hyderabad Assigned Districts" which were popularly supposed to form the province of Berar, though they coincided in extent neither with the Berar of the nizams nor with the old Mogul province. In 1860, by a new treaty which modified in the nizam's favour that of 1853, it was agreed that Berar should be held in trust by the British government for the purposes specified in the treaty of 1853. Under British control Berar rapidly recovered its prosperity. Thousands of cultivators who had emigrated across the Wardha to the peshwa's dominions, in order to escape the ruinous fiscal system of the nizam's government, now returned; the American Civil War gave an immense stimulus to the cotton trade; the laying of a line of railway across the province provided yet further employment, and the people rapidly became prosperous and contented. See _Imperial Gazetteer of India_ (Oxford, 1908), and authorities there quoted. BERARD, JOSEPH FREDERIC (1789-1828), French physician and philosopher, was born at Montpellier. Educated at the medical school of that town, he afterwards went to Paris, where he was employed in connexion with the _Dictionnaire des sciences medicales_. He returned in 1816, and published a work, _Doctrine medicale de l'ecole de Montpellier_ (1819), which is indispensable to a proper understanding of the principles of the Vitalistic school. In 1823 he was called to a chair of medicine at Paris, which he held for three years; he was then nominated professor of hygiene at Montpellier. His health gave way under his labours, and he died in 1828. His most important book is his _Doctrines des rapports du physique et du moral_ (Paris, 1823). He held that consciousness or internal perception reveals to us the existence of an immaterial, thinking, feeling and willing subject, the self or soul. Alongside of this there is the vital force, the nutritive power, which uses the physical frame as its organ. The soul and the principle of life are in constant reciprocal action, and the first owes to the second, not the formation of its faculties, but the conditions under which they are evolved. He showed himself unable to understand the points of view of those whom he criticized, and yet his own theories, midway between vitalism and animism, are entirely destitute of originality. To the _Esprit des doctrines medicales de Montpellier_, published posthumously (Paris, 1830), the editor, H. Petiot, prefixed an account of his life and works; see also Damiron, _Phil. en France au XIX^e siecle_ (Paris, 1834); C.J. Tissot, _Anthropologie generale_ (1843). BERAT (Slav. _Byelgorod_; Turk. _Arnaut-Beligradi_), the capital of a sanjak in the vilayet of Iannina, southern Albania, Turkey; on the river Ergene, Ergeni or Osum, a left-hand tributary of the Semeni. Pop. (1900) about 15,000. Berat is a fortified town, situated in a fertile valley, which produces wine, olive-oil, fruit and grain. It is the see of an Orthodox metropolitan, and the inhabitants, of whom two-thirds are Albanian and the remainder principally Greek, are equally divided in religion between Christianity and Islam. BERAUN (Czech _Beroun_), a town of Bohemia, Austria, 27 m. S.W. of Prague by rail. Pop. (1900) 9693, mostly Czech. It is situated at the confluence of the Beraun with the Litawa river, and is the seat of important textile industry, sugar-refining, corn-milling and brewing. Lime-kilns and the manufacture of cement, and smelting and iron works are carried on in the environs. Beraun is a place of immemorial antiquity. It was originally called _na Brode_ (by the ford), and received the name of Bern, Berun or Verona in the 13th century, when it obtained the privileges of a city from the emperor Charles IV., who was specially attached to the place, calling it "Verona mea." Under his patronage the town rapidly prospered. In 1421 Zizka stormed the town, which later on was retaken and devastated by the troops of Duke Leopold, bishop of Passau. During the Thirty Years' War it was sacked by the Imperialists, the Saxons and the Swedes in turn; and in the first Silesian war the same fate befell it at the hands of the French and Bavarians. BERBER, a town and mudiria (province) of the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan. The town is on the right bank of the Nile, 1140 ft. above sea-level, in 18 deg. 1' N., 33 deg. 59' E., and 214 m. by rail N.W. of Khartum. Pop. about 6000. Berber derived its importance from being the starting-point of the caravan route, 242 m. long, across the Nubian desert to the Red Sea at Suakin, a distance covered in seven to twelve days. It was also one of the principal stopping-places between Cairo and Khartum. The caravan route to the Red Sea was superseded in 1906 by a railway, which leaves the Wadi Halfa-Khartum line at the mouth of the Atbara. Berber thus lost the Red Sea trade. It remains the centre and market-place for the produce of the Nile valley for a considerable distance. East of the town is an immense plain, which, if irrigated, would yield abundant crops. Berber, or El Mekerif, is a town of considerable antiquity. Before its conquest by the Egyptians in 1820 its ruler owed allegiance to the kings of Sennar. It was captured by the Mahdists on the 26th of May 1884, and was re-occupied by the Anglo-Egyptian army on the 6th of September 1897. It was the capital of the mudiria until 1905, in which year the headquarters of the province were transferred to Ed Damer, a town near the confluence of the Nile and Atbara. At the northern end of the mudiria is Abu Hamed (q.v.), important as a railway junction for Dongola mudiria. The best-known of the tribes inhabiting the province are the Hassania, Jaalin, Bisharin and Kimilab. During the Mahdia most of these tribes suffered severely at the hands of the dervishes. In 1904 the total population of the province was estimated at 83,000. It has since considerably increased. The riverain population is largely engaged in agriculture, the chief crops cultivated being durra, barley, wheat and cotton. BERBERA, chief town and principal port of the British Somaliland protectorate, North-East Africa, 155 m. S. of Aden, in 10 deg. 26' N., 45 deg. 4' E. Berbera stands at the head of a deep inlet which forms the only completely sheltered haven on the south side of the Gulf of Aden. It is the residence of the commissioner of the protectorate and the headquarters of the Somaliland battalion of the King's African Rifles. The harbour is eleven to thirteen fathoms deep at the entrance (indicated by a lighthouse), decreasing to five fathoms near the shore. Ocean-going steamers find ample accommodation. There are two piers and numerous warehouses. The town is built in two divisions--the native town to the east, the new town, laid out by the Egyptians (1875-1877), to the west. The majority of the better-class houses are of rubble, one-storeyed and flat-roofed. The public buildings include the fort, hospital and barracks. There are a Roman Catholic mission-house and convent and a government school. The affairs of the town are administered by a municipality. The water-supply is brought to the town by an aqueduct from the hills some 8 m. distant. The bulk of the inhabitants are Somali, who have abandoned a nomadic life and adopted largely the ways of the Arab and Indian traders. The permanent population is under 10,000; but from October to April the population rises to 30,000 or more by the arrival of caravans from Ogaden and Dolbahanta. The traders bring with them tents on the backs of camels and these are pitched near the native town. Their merchandise consists of sheep and goats, gum and resin, skins and ostrich feathers. The trade is almost entirely with Aden, of which Berbera may be considered a commercial dependency. The value of the goods brought in yearly by caravan exceeds on the average L100,000. The total trade of the port for the five years 1901-1902 to 1905-1906 averaged over L200,000 a year. The chief articles of import are cotton goods (European white longcloth and American grey shirting), rice and jowari, flour, dates, sugar and tobacco (the last from Rotterdam). Berbera is said to have been founded by the Ptolemies among the _Barbari_ of the adjacent coast lands. It fell subsequently into the possession of Arabs and was included in the Mahommedan state of Adel. At the time of the visit to the town of R.F. Burton and J.H. Speke (1854) it was governed by its own sheiks. In 1870 it was claimed by the khedive Ismail, but was not permanently occupied by Egypt until 1875. In 1884 it passed into the possession of Great Britain (see SOMALILAND, S 2, _History_). BERBERINE, C20H17NO4, an alkaloid occurring together with the alkaloids oxyacanthine C18H19NO3, berbamine C18H19NO3, hydrastine C21H21NO6, and canadine C20H21NO4, in _Berberis vulgaris_; it also occurs in other plants, _Berberis aristata, B. aquifolium, Hydrastis canadensis_, &c. It is a yellow, crystalline solid, insoluble in ether and chloroform, soluble in 4-1/2 parts of water at 21 deg., and moderately soluble in alcohol. It is a monacid base; the hydrochloride, C20H17NO4.HCl, is insoluble in cold alcohol, ether and chloroform, and soluble in 500 parts of water; the acid sulphate, C20H17NO4.H2SO4 dissolves in about 100 parts of water. Canadine is a tetrahydroberberine. Its constitution was worked out by W.H. Perkin (_J.C.S._, 1889, 55, p. 63; 1890, 57, p. 991). This followed from a study of the decomposition products, there being obtained hemipinic acid (CH3O)2C6H2(COOH)2, and a substance which proved to be [omega]-amino-ethyl-piperonyl carboxylic acid, CH2O2:C6H2.COOH.CH2.CH2NH2. His formula was modified by Gadamer (_Abs. J.C.S._, 1902, 1, p. 555), who made the free base an aldehyde, but the salts of an _iso_-quinolinium type. This formula, which necessitates the presence of two asymmetric carbon atoms in an alkyl tetrahydroberberine, has been accepted by M. Freund and F. Mayer (_Abs. J.C.S._, 1907, 1, p. 632), who showed that two racemic propyl tetrahydroberberines are produced when propyl dihydroberberine is reduced. BERBERS, Ethnology. the name under which are included the various branches of the indigenous "Libyan" race of North Africa. Since the dawn of history the Berbers have occupied the tract between the Mediterranean and the Sahara from Egypt to the Atlantic. The origin of the name is doubtful. Some believe it to be derived from the word [Greek: barbaroi] (barbarians), employed first by the Greeks and later by the Romans. Others attribute the first use of the term to the Arab conquerors. However this may be, tribal titles, _Barabara_ and _Beraberata_, appear in Egyptian inscriptions of 1700 and 1300 B.C., and the Berbers were probably intimately related with the Egyptians in very early times. Thus the true ethnical name may have become confused with _Barbari_, the designation naturally used by classical conquerors. To the Egyptians they were known as "Lebu," "Mashuasha," "Tamahu," "Tehennu" and "Kahaka"; a long list of names is found in Herodotus, and the Romans called them Numidae, Gaetuli and Mauri, terms which have been derived respectively from the Greek [Greek: nomades] (nomads), the name Gued'oula, of a great Berber tribe, and the Hebrew _mahur_ (western). To speak of more modern times there can be enumerated the Zouaoua and Jebalia (Tripoli and Tunisia); the Chauwia, Kabyles and Beni-Mzab (Algeria); the Shluh (Chlouah), Amazigh and Berbers (Morocco); the Tuareg, Arnoshagh, Sorgu, &c. (Sahara). These tribes have many sub-tribes, each with a distinctive name. Among the Azgar, an important division of the Tuareg, one of the noble or free tribes, styled Aouraghen, is said to descend from a tribe named Avrigha. The Avrigha, or Afrigha, in ancient times occupied the coast lands near Carthage, and some scholars derive the word Africa from their name (see AFRICA, ROMAN). In regard to the ethnic relations of the Berbers there has been much dispute. The antiquity of their type is evidenced by the monuments of Egypt, where their ancestors are pictured with the same comparatively blond features which many of them still display. The aborigines of the Canary Islands, the Guanches, would seem almost certainly, from the remains of their language, to have been Berbers. But the problem of the actual origin of the Berber race has not yet been solved. Perhaps the most satisfactory theory is that of Sergi, who includes the Berbers in the "Mediterranean Race." General L.L.C. Faidherbe regards them as indigenous Libyans mingled with a fair-skinned people of European origin. Dr Franz Pruner-Bey, Henri Duveyrier and Prof. Flinders Petrie maintain that they are closely related to the ancient Egyptians. Connexion has been traced between the early Libyan race and the Cro-Magnon and other early European races and, later, the Basque peoples, Iberians, Picts, Celts and Gauls. The megalithic monuments of Iberia and Celtic Europe have their counterparts in northern Africa, and it is suggested that these were all erected by the same race, by whatever name they be known, Berbers and Libyans in Africa, Iberians in Spain, Celts, Gauls and Picts in France and Britain. Characteristics. In spite of a history of foreign conquest--Phoenician, Greek, Roman, Vandal, Arab and French--the Berber physical type and the Berber temperament and nationality have persisted since the stone age. The numerous invasions have naturally introduced a certain amount of foreign blood among the tribes fringing the Mediterranean, but those farther inland have preserved their racial purity to a surprising degree. Though considerable individual differences of type may be found in every village, the Berbers are distinctively a "white" race, and the majority would, if clad in European costume, pass unchallenged as Europeans. Dark hair and brown or hazel eyes are the rule; blue-eyed blonds are found, but their frequency has been considerably overstated. The invaders who have most affected the Berber race are the Arabs, but the two races, with a common religion, often a common government, with the same tribal groupings, have failed to amalgamate to any great extent. This fact has been emphasized by Dr R.G. Latham, who writes: "All that is not Arabic in the kingdom of Morocco, all that is not Arabic in the French provinces of Algeria, and all that is not Arabic in Tunis, Tripoli and Fezzan, is Berber." The explanation lies in a profound distinction of character. The Arab is a herdsman and a nomad; the Berber is an agriculturist and a townsman. The Arab has built his social structure on the Koran, which inculcates absolutism, aristocracy, theocracy; the Berber, despite his nominal Mahommedanism, is a democrat, with his _Jemaa_ or "Witangemot" and his _Kanum_ or unwritten code, the Magna Carta of the individual's liberty as opposed to the community's good. The _Kanum_ forbids no sort of exercise of individual will, so long as it is not inimical to the right or rights of other individuals. The Arabizing of the Berbers is indeed limited to little beyond the conversion of the latter to Islam. The Arab, transported to a soil which does not always suit him, so far from thriving, tends to disappear, whereas the Berber becomes more and more aggressive, and yearly increases in numbers. At present he forms at least three-fifths of the population in Algeria, and in Morocco the proportion is greater. The difference between the Berber and the Arab of the Barbary States is summed up by Dr Randall MacIver in the following words:--"The Berber gives the impression of being, as he is, the descendant of men who have lived in sturdy independence, self-governing and self-reliant. The Arab is the degenerate offspring of a race which only from its history and past records can claim any title to respect. Cringing, venal, avaricious, dishonest, the Arab combines all the faults of a vicious nature with those which a degraded religion inculcates or encourages. The Berber, on the other hand, is straightforward, honest, by no means averse to money-making, but not unscrupulous in the methods which he employs to this end, intelligent in a degree to which the ordinary Arab never approaches, and trustworthy as no Arab can be." Government. The Berber's village is his state, and the government is vested in an assembly, the _Jemaa_, formed of all males old enough to observe the fast of Ramadan. By them are determined all matters of peace or war, legislation, taxation and justice. The executive officer is the _Amin_, a kind of mayor, elected from some influential family in which the dignity is often in practice hereditary. He owes his position to the good-will of his fellows, receives no remuneration, and resigns as soon as he loses the confidence of the people. By him are appointed certain _Temman_ (sing. _Tamen_) who act as overseers, though without executive powers, in the various quarters of the village. The poorest Berber has as great a voice in affairs as the richest. The undue power of the _Jemaa_ is checked by vendetta and a sort of lynch law, and by the formation of parties (_sofs_), within or without the assembly, for trade, political and other purposes. The Berbers are a warlike people who have never been completely subjugated. Every boy as soon as he reaches sixteen is brought into the _Jemaa_ and given weapons which he carries till he is sixty. Though each village is absolutely independent as far as its internal affairs are concerned, two or more are often connected by administrative ties to form an _Arsh_ or tribe. A number of these tribes form a _Thakebilt_ or confederation, which is an extremely loose organization. An exception to this form of government is constituted by the Tuareg, whose organization, owing to their peculiar circumstances of life, is monarchical. Wars are declared by special messengers; the exchange of sticks or guns renders an armistice inviolable. In some tribes a tablet, on which is inscribed the name of every man fit to bear arms, is placed in the mosque. The Berbers, though Mahommedans, do not often observe the prescribed ablutions; they break their fast at Ramadan; and eat wild boar's flesh and drink fig brandy. On the other hand, saints, both male and female, are paid more reverence by Berbers than by Arabs. Around their tombs their descendants settle, and thus sacred villages, often of considerable size, spring up. Almost every village, too, has its saint or prophet, and disputes as to their relative sanctity and powers cause fierce feuds. The hereditary caste known as Marabouts are frequently in open opposition to the absolute authority of the _Jemaa_. They are possessed of certain privileges, such as exemption from the chief taxes and the duty of bearing arms. They, however, often take a foremost part in tribal administration, and are frequently called upon to perform the office of arbitrators in questions of disputed policy, &c. In the _Jemaa_, too, the Marabout at times takes the place of honour and keeps order. The Berbers, if irreligious, are very superstitious, never leaving their homes without exorcizing evil spirits, and have a good and evil interpretation for every day of the week. Many Berbers still retain certain Christian and Jewish usages, relics of the pre-Islamitic days in North Africa, but of their primitive religion there is no trace. They are seldom good scholars, but those under French rule take all the advantage they can of the schools instituted by the government. Their social tendencies are distinctly communistic; property is often owned by the family in common, and a man can call upon the services of his fellow villagers for certain purposes, as the building of a house. Provision for the poor is often made by the community. Customs. The dress of the Berbers was formerly made of home-woven cloth, and the manufacture of woollen stuffs has always been one of the chief occupations of their women. The men wear a tunic reaching to the knees, the women a longer garment. For work the men use a leather apron, and in the cold season and in travelling a burnous, usually a family heirloom, old and ragged; the women, in winter, throw a coloured cloth over their shoulders. The men's hair is cut short but their beards are allowed to grow. In some districts there are peculiar customs, such as the wearing of small silver nose-rings, seen in El-Jofra. The Berbers' weapons are those of the Arab: the long straight sword, the slightly curved and highly ornamented dagger, and the long gun. Berbers are not great town-builders. Their villages, however, are often of substantial appearance: with houses of untrimmed stones, occasionally with two storeys, built on hills, and invariably defended by a bank, a stone wall or a hedge. Sometimes their homes are mere huts of turf, or of clay tiles, with mortar made from lime and clay or cow-dung. The sloping roof is covered with reeds, straw or stones. The living room is on the right, the cattle-stall on the left. The dwelling is surrounded by a garden or small field of grain. The second storey is not added till a son marries. In the villages of the western Atlas the greater part of the upper storey consists of a sort of rough verandah. In this mountain district the natives spend the winter in vaults beneath the houses, and, for the sake of warmth, the tenements are built very close. Agriculture, which is carried on even in the mountain districts by means of laboriously constructed terraces, is antiquated in its methods. The plough, often replaced on the steeper slopes by the hoe, is similar to that depicted in ancient Egyptian drawings, and hand irrigation is usual. A sickle, toothed like a saw, is used for reaping. Corn is trodden by oxen, and kept in osier baskets narrowing to the top, or clay granaries. The staple crop is barley, but wheat, lentils, vetches, flax and gourds are also cultivated. Tobacco, maize and potatoes have been introduced; and the aloe and prickly pear, called in Morocco the Christian fig, are also found. The Kabyles understand grafting, have fine orchards and grow vines. The Beni-Abbas tribe in the Algerian Atlas is famed for its walnuts, and many tribes keep bees, chiefly for the commercial value of the wax. The Berber diet largely consists of cucumbers, gourds, water-melons and onions, and a small artichoke (_Cynara humilis_) which grows wild. At the beginning and end of their meal they drink a strongly sweetened liquid made from green tea and mint. Tea-drinking probably became a habit in Morocco about the beginning of the 19th century; coffee came by way of Algiers. At feasts the food is served on large earthenware dishes with high basket-work covers, like bee-skeps but twice as high. Industries. The Berbers have many industries. They mine and work iron, lead and copper. They have olive presses and flour mills, and their own millstone quarries, even travelling into Arab districts to build mills for the Arabs. They make lime, tiles, woodwork for the houses, domestic utensils and agricultural implements. They weave and dye several kinds of cloth, tan and dress leather and manufacture oil and soap. Without the assistance of the wheel the women produce a variety of pottery utensils, often of very graceful design, and decorated with patterns in red and black. Whole tribes, such as the Beni-Sliman, are occupied in the iron trade; the Beni-Abbas made firearms before the French conquest, and even cannon are said to have been made by boring. Before it was proscribed by the French, the manufacture of gunpowder was general. The native jewellers make excellent ornaments in silver, coral and enamel. In some places wood-carving has been brought to considerable perfection; and native artists know how to engrave on metal both by etching and the burin. In its collective industry the Berber race is far superior to the Arab. The Berbers are keen traders too, and, after the harvest, hawk small goods, travelling great distances. Women. A Berber woman has in many ways a better position than her Arab sister. True, her birth is regarded as an event of no moment, while that of a boy is celebrated by great rejoicings, and his mother acquires the right to wear on her forehead the _tafzint_, a mark which only the women who have borne an heir can assume. Her husband buys and can dismiss her at will. She has most of the hard work to do, and is little better than a servant. When she is old and past work, especially if she has not been the mother of a male child, she is often abandoned. But she has a voice in public affairs; she has laws to protect her, manages the household and goes unveiled; she has a right to the money she earns; she can inherit under wills, and bequeath property, though to avoid the alienation of real property, succession to it is denied her. But most characteristic of her social position is the Berber woman's right to enter into a sacred bond or agreement, represented by the giving of the _anaya_. This is some symbolic object, stick or what not, which passes between the parties to a contract, the obligations under which, if not fulfilled by the contracting parties during their lives, become hereditary. Female saints, too, are held in high honour; and the Berber pays his wife the compliment of monogamy. The Kabyle women have stood side by side with their husbands in battle. Among many Berber tribes the law of inheritance is such that the eldest daughter's son succeeds. South of Morocco proper, Gerhard Rohlfs, who travelled extensively in the region (c. 1861-1867), states that a Berber religious corporation, the _Savia Kartas_, was ruled over by a woman, the chief's wife. The Berbers consult their women in many matters, and only one woman is really held in low esteem. She, curiously, is the _kuata_ or "go-between," even though her services are only employed in the respectable task of arranging marriages. Berber women are intelligent and hard-working, and, when young, very pretty and graceful. The Berbers, unlike the Arabs, do not admire fat women. Among the Kabyles the adulteress is put to death, as are those women who have illegitimate children, the latter suffering with their mothers. Language. Though Arabic has to a considerable extent displaced the Berber language, the latter is still spoken by millions of people from Egypt to the Atlantic and from the Mediterranean to the Sudan. It is spoken nowhere else, though, as has been said, place-names in the Canary Islands and other remains of the aboriginal language there prove it to have been the native tongue. Although the Berber tongue shows a certain affinity with Semitic in the construction both of its words and sentences Berber is quite distinct from the Semitic languages; and a remarkable fact is that in spite of the enormous space over which the dialects are spread and the thousands of years that some of the Berber peoples have been isolated from the rest, these dialects show but slight differences from the long-extinct Hamitic speech from which all are derived. Whatever these dialects be called, the Kabyle, the Shilha, the Zenati, the Tuareg or Tamashek, the Berber language is still essentially one, and the similarity between the forms current in Morocco, Algeria, the Sahara and the far-distant oasis of Siwa is much more marked than between the Norse and English in the sub-Aryan Teutonic group. The Berbers have, moreover, a writing of their own, peculiar and little used or known, the antiquity of which is proved by monuments and inscriptions ranging over the whole of North Africa. The various spoken dialects, though apparently very unlike each other, are not more dissimilar than are Portuguese, Spanish, French and Italian, and their differences are doubtless attributable to the lack of a literary standard. Even where different words are used, there is evidence of a common stem from which the various branches have sprung. The great difficulty of satisfactory comparison arises from the fact that few of the Beber dialects possess any writings. The _Tawahhid_ (The Unity of God), said to have been written in Moroccan Berber and believed to be the oldest African work in existence, except Egyptian and Ethiopic, was the work of the Muwahhadi leader, Ibn Tumart the Mahdi, at a time when the officials of the Kairawan mosque were dismissed because they could not speak Berber. Most of the writings found, however, have been in the form of inscriptions, chiefly on ornaments. A collection of the various signs of the alphabet has shown thirty-two letters, four more than Arabic. De Slane, in his notes on the Berber historian Ibn Khaldun, shows the following points of similarity to the Semitic class:--its tri-literal roots, the inflections of the verb, the formation of derived verbs, the genders of the second and third persons, the pronominal affixes, the aoristic style of tense, the whole and broken plurals and the construction of the phrase. Among the peculiar grammatical features of Berber may be mentioned two numbers (no dual), two genders and six cases, and verbs with one, two, three and four radicals, and imperative and aorist tense only. As might be expected the Berber tongue is most common in Morocco and the western Sahara--the regions where Arab dominion was least exercised. When Arabic is mentioned as the language of Morocco it is seldom realized how small a proportion of its inhabitants use it as their mother tongue. Berber is the real language of Morocco, Arabic that of its creed and government. BIBLIOGRAPHY.--General A. Hanoteau and A. Letourneux, _La Kabylie et les coutumes kabyles_ (3 vols., Paris, 1872-1873); D. Randall-MacIver and Antony Wilkin, _Libyan Notes_ (London, 1901); Antony Wilkin, _Among the Berbers of Algeria_ (London, 1900); G. Sergi, _The Mediterranean Race_ (London, 1901), and _Africa, Antropologia della Stirpe Comitica_ (Turin, 1897); Henri Duveyrier, _Exploration du Sahara_ (1864), _Les Progres de la geographie en Algerie_ (1867-1871), _Bull. de la Soc. Khediviale de Geog_. (1876); E. Renan, "La Societe Berbere," _Revue des deux mondes_, vol. for 1873; M.G. Olivier, "Recherches sur l'origine des Berberes," _Bull. de l'Acad. d'Hippone_ (1867-1868); F.G. Rohlfs, _Reise durch Marokko_ (1869); _Quer durch Afrika_ (1874-1875); General Faidherbe, _Collection complete des inscriptions numidiques (lybiques)_ (1870), and _Les Dolmens d'Afrique_ (1873); H.M. Flinders Petrie in _The Academy_, 20th of April 1895; Jules Lionel, _Races berberes_ (1894); Sir H.H. Johnston, "A Journey through the Tunisian Sahara," _Geog. Journal_, vol. xi., 1898; De Slane's translation of Ibn Khaldun, _Hist, des Berberes_ (Algiers, 1852); W.Z. Ripley, _Races of Europe_ (London, 1900); Dr Malbot, "Les Chaouias" in _L'Anthropologie_, 1897 (p. 14); General Faidherbe and Dr Paul Topinard, _Instructions sur l'anthropologie de l'Algerie_ (Paris, 1874); E.T. Hamy, _La Necropole berbere d'Henchir el-'Assel_ (Paris, 1896), and _Cites et necropoles berberes de l'Enfida (Tunisie moyenne) (ib._ 1904). Berber dictionaries:--_Venture de Paradis_ (Paris, 1844); Brosselard (_ib._ 1844); Delaporte (_ib._ 1844, by order of minister of war); J.B. Creusat, _Essai de dictionnaire francais-kabyle_ (Algiers, 1873); A. Hanoteau, _Essai de grammaire de la langue tamachek, &c._ (Paris, 1860); Minutoli, _Siwah Dialect_ (Berlin, 1827). Folklore, &c.:--J. Riviere, _Recueil de contes populaires de la Kabylie_ (1882); R. Basset, _Contes populaires berberes_ (1887); P. le Blanc de Prebois, _Essai de contes kabyles, avec traduction en francais_ (Batna, 1897); H. Stumine, _Marchen der Berbern van Tamazratt in Sudtunisien_ (Leipzig, 1900). BERCEUSE (Fr. for a "lullaby," from _berceau_, a cradle), a cradle-song, the German _Wiegenlied_, a musical composition with a quiet rocking accompaniment. BERCHEM (or BERGHEM), NICOLAAS (1620-1683), Dutch painter, was born at Haarlem. He received instruction from his father (Pieter Claasz van Haarlem) and from the painters Van Goyen, Jan Wils and Weenix. It is not known why he called himself Berchem (or Berighem, and other variants). His pictures, of which he produced an immense number, were in great demand, as were also his etchings and drawings. His landscapes are highly esteemed; and many of them have been finely engraved by John Visscher. His finest pictures are at the Amsterdam Museum and at the Hermitage, St Petersburg. BERCHTA (English Bertha), a fairy in South German mythology. She was at first a benevolent spirit, the counterpart of Hulda in North German myth. Later her character changed and she came to be regarded as a witch. In Pagan times Berchta had the rank of a minor deity. BERCHTESGADEN, a town of Germany, beautifully situated on the south-eastern confines of the kingdom of Bavaria, 1700 ft. above the sea on the southern declivity of the Untersberg, 6 m. S.S.E. from Reichenhall by rail. Pop. (1900) 10,046. It is celebrated for its extensive mines of rock-salt, which were worked as early as 1174. The town contains three old churches, of which the early Gothic abbey church with its Romanesque cloister is most notable, and some good houses. Apart from the salt-mines, its industries include toys and other small articles of wood, horn and ivory, for which the place has long been famous. The district of Berchtesgaden was formerly an independent spiritual principality, founded in 1100 and secularized in 1803. The abbey is now a royal castle, and in the neighbourhood a hunting-lodge was built by King Maximilian II. in 1852. BERCK, a bathing resort of northern France, in the department of Pas-de-Calais, 25 m. S. of Boulogne by rail. Pop. (1906) 7638. It comprises two parts--Berck-Ville, 1-1/2 m. from the shore, and Berck-Plage, the latter with a fine sandy beach. There are two children's hospitals, the climate proving peculiarly beneficial in the treatment of scrofulous affections. About 150 boats are employed in the fisheries, and herrings form the staple of an active trade. Boat-building and fish-curing are carried on. BERDICHEV, a town of W. Russia, in the government of Kiev, 116 m. S.W. of Kiev by rail and not far from the borders of Volhynia. The cathedral of the Assumption, finished in 1832, is the principal place of worship. The fortified Carmelite monastery, founded in 1627, was captured and plundered by Chmielnicki, chief of the Zaporogian Cossacks, in 1647, and disestablished in 1864. An extensive trade is carried on in peltry, silk goods, iron and wooden wares, salt fish, grain, cattle and horses. Four fairs are held yearly, the most important being on the 12th of June and the 15th of August. The numerous minor industries include the manufacture of tobacco, soap, candles, oil, bricks and leather. Pop. (1867) 52,563; (1897) 53,728, Jews forming about 80%. In the treaty of demarcation between the Lithuanians and the Poles in 1546 Berdichev was assigned to the former. In 1768 Pulaski, leader of the confederacy of Bar, fled, after the capture of that city, to Berdichev, and there maintained himself during a siege of twenty-five days. The town belongs to the Radziwill family. BERDYANSK, a seaport town of Russia, in the government of Taurida, on the north coast of the Sea of Azov, in 46 deg. 45' N. lat. and 36 deg. 40' E. long. The principal industries are in bricks and tiles, tallow and macaroni. The roads are protected from every wind except the south, which occasions a heavy surf; but against this a mole was constructed in