and sugar-care, rice, yams, etc., are grown, The religion is fetichism, and human sacrifices were formerly numerous. There is a considerable trade in palm oil.
In February, 1897, the Benin country was included within the Niger Coast Protectorate, and a British Resident was installed in the chief town. It is now included in the Colony and Protectorate of Nigeria.
BENIN, BIGHT OF, part of the Gulf of Guinea, west Africa, which extends into the land between the mouth of the river Volta and that of the Nun.
BENT SUEF. a town of Egypt; on the left bank of the Nile, about 65 miles S. of Cairo. It has the residence of the governor, and manufactures of stuffs, linen and carpets. Pop. about 25.000. The province of Beni Suef, of which it is the capital, has a population of about 400,000.
BENJAMIN. the youngest son of Jacob and Rachel (Gen. xv: 16-18). Rachel died immediately after he was born, and with her last breath named him Ben-oni, the "son of my sorrow"; bet Jacob called him Benjamin, "son of my right hand." The trite of Benjamin, small at first, was almost exterminated in the days of the Judges, but afterward it greatly increased. On the revolt of the ten tribes, Benjamin adhered to the camp of Judah; and the two tribes ever afterward closely united. King Saul and Saul of Tarsus were both Benjamites.
BENJAMIN. JUDAH PHILIP. an American lawyer, born in St. Croix, West Indies, Aug. 11, 1811; was of English parentage and of Jewish faith. He was educated at Yale College; admitted to the bar in New Orleans, in 1852; and elected to the United States Senate in 1852 and 1858. At the beginning of the Civil War, he resigned from the Senate and declared his adhesion to the State of Louisiana. In 1861 he accepted the office of Attorney-General in the Cabinet of Jefferson Davis, and afterward be came successively Confederate Secretary of War and Secretary of State. After the war he went to London, England, was admitted to the bar in 1866 and be came famous. He wrote a "Treatise on the Law of Sale of Personal Property (1868). He died in Paris, May 7, 1884
BEN LAWERS, a mountain in Perthshire, Scotland, flanking the N. W. shore of Loch Tay. It is rich in Alpine plants. and there is a magnificent view from its summit, which is, with the cairn at the top, 4,004 feet high.
BEN LEDI. a mountain (2.875 feet) of Perthshire, Scotland, 4½ miles W. by N. of Callander. A jubilee cairn was erected on it in 1887.
BENLOMOND. a mountain of Scotland, in Stirlingshire, on the E. shore of Loch Lomond, rising to a height of 3.192 feet and giving a magnificent prospect of the vale of Stirlingshire, the Lothians, the Clyde, etc.
BENNETT. (ENOCH) ARNOLD, English novelist and playwright, who has won a high and distinctive place in modern fiction. He was born at Hanley, England, May 27, 1867. He was at first inclined to follow law as a profession, but abandoned this for journalism, becoming editor of "Woman in 1896. But his creative instinct sought expression in fiction, to which he devoted himself after 1900. His first two novels made no deep impression, but a veritable sensation was produced by the first of his stories of the pottery district of North Staffordshire, "Anna of the Five Towns" (1902). This was followed at intervals until 1912 by six other books of the same type, all dealing with the "Five Towns" and in many cases involving the same characters. On a limited scale, it was like the "Comédie Humaine" of Balzac. With marvelous ability Bennett takes the dull, monotonous lives of various classes in an English factory district and shows the strength and fierceness at times of the elemental passions beneath the drab exteriors. As Trollope was the historian par excellence of the life that went on in ecclesiastical towns, so Bennett registers the currents of existence in the manufacturing centers, which to so many writers seem destitute of all romance. In his fecundity, too, he resembles Trollope, and over 30 novels have been written by him, all of them marked in varying degrees by literary distinction. He has also written several plays that have attained success. most notable of which is "Milestones" (1912). During the World War he has written many articles bearing on widely differing phases of the confict.
BENNEET, JAMES GORDON. a Scotch-American journalist; founder and proprietor of the New York "Herald," in Keith, Sept. 1. 1795. Trained for the Roman Catholic priesthood, he emigrated to the United States in 1819, where he became in turn teacher, proof reader, journalist, and lecturer. He had acted as casual reporter and writer in connection with several journals, and had failed in one or two journalistic ventures, previous to the issue of
