nated marechal de camp, and in 1762 he was appointed to the command of the troops of Saint Domingo, of which he was subsequently named governor and lieutenant-general. This office he afterwards exchanged for that of governor of the town and citadel of Belle-Isle.—G. M.
BELSUNCE DE CASTEL-MORON, Henri-François-Xavier de, a French jesuit, born, 1671; died, 1755. Soon after entering the order, he became grand vicar of Agen; and in 1709 was made bishop of Marseilles. During the continuance of the plague, by which that city was desolated in 1720-21, the philanthropic exertions of Belsunce were such as to draw on him the admiration of all Europe. In 1723 the king nominated him bishop of Laon, and in 1729 archbishop of Bordeaux, both of which offices he declined to accept. His excessive attachment to his order led him into some acts of persecution, by which his fame was afterwards tarnished.—G. M.
BELTEMAN was of German extraction, and lived at the beginning of the present century. He was a writer of elegant love songs, in imitation of Bougaria, whose style, however, he seldom equalled.
BELVEDERE, Andrea, was born at Naples in 1646, and died in 1689. He excelled in painting flowers, fruit, and small vegetables.—W. T.
BELYARD, Simon, a French poet, who made himself remarkable for the active part he took in "the league," composing in 1592 a tragedy called "Le Guyzien," in which he assailed Henry of Valois. He also wrote an eclogue with the same object. These works are read rather as "curiosities of literature," than for their merit.—J. F. W.
BELZONI, Giovanni Battista (Anglice, John Baptist), was born at Padua in the year 1778; but he resided so long in England, and was so much assisted by English capital in his travels and explorations, that a certain portion of the glory attached to his name may be justly said to belong to this country. About Padua, and far and near, in the whole plain of Lombardy, he saw a splendid system of irrigation—the best, perhaps, in the world—carried out; and from an early period he turned his attention to hydraulics and hydraulic machines. It was with the view of erecting hydraulic engines for the pasha, Mahomet Ali, to assist in irrigating the country, that he first visited Egypt, where he was destined to secure for himself a name that will be long remembered among mankind. But, as Sallust says, "we must begin from the beginning."
When yet a child, Belzoni set out from home, taking with him a younger brother, Antonio, with no other idea in his head than that they would travel "to seek their fortune." In this early attempt at travelling, Belzoni had a foretaste of what he was to experience in after life, and he had occasion to learn that human nature is, on the whole, a mixed quantity. After wandering some miles out of Padua, a pedlar—and let it be remembered that the pedlar's
" Hard service deemed debasing now,
Gained merited respect in simpler times;"—
overtook them on the road, and asked if they were going to Ferrara. Young Belzoni had never even heard of Ferrara, but he readily answered, "Yes;" and the itinerating merchant invited the boys to take a ride in his cart. He not merely c arried them so far on their way, but, like a good Samaritan, he supplied them with food and lodging. Next morning the young travellers pursued their journey, their kind friend being detained on business in the village where they slept; and being overtaken by an empty carriage, they were bold enough to ask the driver to give them a ride to Ferrara. On arriving there, the driver demanded a fare; but the poor boys had nothing to give, and the driver paid himself by stripping them of half their clothes. Except for the lamentation of Antonio, it is probable that master John would have wandered farther from home; but the younger brother insisted on their returning, and they began, accordingly, "homeward to plod their weary way," forty miles, back to Padua. Such was the first of the "mony a weary fit" that Belzoni was born to travel.
The father of Belzoni was by trade a barber, and John was brought up to the same business. When eighteen years of age he determined to visit Rome, to which city his family originally belonged, although he was born in Padua; and it is believed that he carried on business as a barber and hair-dresser for some time with considerable success. Indeed, he was getting on so prosperously, that he had the courage to propose marriage to a young Roman damsel; but she flatly refused the offer, and drove the young barber to—a monastery! He became a capuchin monk, and was busy boring an artesian well when the French army, under Napoleon, entered "the eternal city," in the year 1798. The monks were soon dispersed, and Belzoni had to renew the battle of life, and again set out on his travels. He still flattered himself that he had something worth showing in hydraulic science, and he made the best of his way to Holland, expecting to find patrons in the country where "the highways and byways" are all canals. The phlegmatic Dutch paid no attention to the offers of the engineer from the valley of the Po, and Belzoni, hoping better things of England, bade farewell to Holland, and cast in his lot with us. Nor had he any reason to repent it. For, though England did not adopt his hydraulic inventions, she gave the adventurous Paduan a home, where he spent many happy years; she gave him a wife, who was the faithful companion of all his wanderings; and she gave him kind patrons, who enabled him to gratify the craving instinct for travel, by which he had been actuated from a child. It was in 1803 that he came to this country, and he had not been long in it before he united himself, as has been already indicated, to a daughter of the land. The English were slow to appreciate the merit of his machines, and to procure subsistence, he was obliged to exhibit on the streets feats of bodily strength and agility. It was in this way that the young Paduan, the fellow-townsman of Livy, was occupied—lifting enormous weights, jumping from a table over the heads of twelve men, &c.—when he attracted the notice of a gentleman of the name of Salt, with whose fortune Belzoni's was destined to be afterwards so closely united. Mr. Salt joined the gaping crowd in the streets of Edinburgh, to see the wonderful mountebank; and when, at the end of the performance, the plate was sent round for coppers, he put a silver coin into the hands of the fair collector—none other than Mrs. Belzoni. The wife reported the circumstance to her husband, and he came to thank Mr. Salt in propria persona. Mr. Salt immediately recognized him as an Italian, and he spoke to Belzoni in his own tongue. This opened the exile's heart at once. He soon gave his benefactor the story of his life up to this point, nearly as we have repeated it; and it is scarcely too much to say, that they "swore eternal friendship on the instant," though neither was a Frenchman. Mr. Salt brought Belzoni and his wife to London, and procured for them an engagement at Astley's theatre. A piece entitled, the Twelve Labours of Hercules, was specially prepared for the Paduan Goliath; and Mr. Salt soon had the pleasure of seeing his humble friend Belzoni appear on the stage, carrying twelve men on his arms and shoulders, while his little wife, dressed out as Cupid, stood at the top of all, waving a tiny red flag. Belzoni retained this engagement for several years, and as his salary was liberal, he was able to save a little money. The same "extravagant and erring spirit" as had carried Belzoni to Ferrara, when a child, was still strong within him; and in 1812 he set out on his travels—the travels that were to form the grand feature of his life, and by which he was to secure a niche in the temple of fame. He first landed at Lisbon, and there he soon procured an engagement in one of the principal theatres, to enact the part of Samson, in a scriptural piece prepared expressly for him. From Lisbon he went to Madrid, where he sustained the same character with equal applause. In this way he collected a pretty large sum of money, and he determined to sail for Malta, and finally for Egypt, where his old friend, Mr. Salt, was English consul; his leading idea being, as already indicated, to induce the pasha to adopt a new hydraulic machine for raising the waters of the Nile! Mr. Salt, who resided in Alexandria, gave Belzoni a letter of recommendation to Mr. Baghos, interpreter to Mahomet Ali at Cairo; and, after the necessary diplomatic delay, the wandering Italian was commissioned to construct his grand engine in the pasha's gardens, attached to the seraglio. Belzoni undertook that the new wheel should raise as much water with the labour of one ox, as the old machine did with the labour of four oxen; and notwithstanding the badness of the material supplied him, and the inferior workmen, whose services alone he could command, he finally accomplished what he had undertaken. The Arabs, however, pretended to be greatly disappointed with the result, and they sagely pronounced the machine worth nothing, because it did not inundate the country in an hour. By way of practical joke, the pasha ordered fifteen men to get into the place of the ox, and see what they could do; and, unfortunately, a young Irish
