Arthur Beugnot has more of the qualities that would befit a political career. He has more firmness of conviction. Instead of, like Beugnot the elder, passing from one régime to the other, Beugnot the younger, when liberty was definitively overthrown in France in 1851, preferred, to any honours, a life of retirement and study.—B. de B.
BEUGNOT, Jacques-Claude, Count, was born in 1761 at Bar-sur-Aube in France, and died in June, 1835. He began his career as lieutenant-general of the présidial of Bar. In 1790 he became procurator-general of his department, and the next year he was elected one of the legislative assembly, where he sat as a member of the constitutional party. A very short time before the movement of 1789, M. Beugnot made the acquaintance of the famous madame de la Motte, the worthless heroine of the disastrous affair of the Rohan necklace. Some of his contemporaries have even gone so far as to attribute to this and other intimacies of the same colour, M. Beugnot's liberal opinions. Be that as it may, the young magistrate never went beyond a certain limit in his ideas of political freedom. A partisan of the reforms of 1789, he was from early life a modéré, and in the beginning he was so, courageously. Upon his entrance into the legislative assembly, and in the face of the rising Revolution, he remained with Ramond, Jaucourt, Dumas, Becquey, and a few others, a firm and intelligent champion of the then still-existing remnant of the royal prerogative. He struggled against all that savoured of violence, resisted anarchy to the utmost, and did his best against the tide that was setting in towards war, clearly discerning in the war that was contemplated, the ruin of monarchy in France, and the establishment of a despotic government in the interior. M. Beugnot persevered in the line of conduct he had adopted till the fatal day of the 10th of August, when he retired from the assembly, sought vainly for a refuge, and unable to find one, was imprisoned by the convention. The 9th Thermidor set him, with so many others, free. To M. Beugnot are to be ascribed the following measures:—the explanations given by the court of Vienna of the treaty of Pilnitz, the decree of accusation against Marat for having caused, by his writings, the assassination of General Dillon, and the proceedings against the municipality of Paris, on account of the publication of the newspaper, l'Ami du Peuple. All these acts of moderation made him hateful to the tyrants of the hour, and he passed in retirement the remaining years of the Republic. After the 18th Brumaire, he was attached to Lucien Buonaparte, who had become minister of the interior. He was prefet of Rouen till 1806, when the emperor made him a councillor of state. In 1807 he was finance minister to Jerome, king of Westphalia. In 1808 he was made a count, and an officer of the légion d'honneur, for his administration of the grand duchy of Berg and Cleves. M. Beugnot returned to France in 1813, after the disaster of Leipzig, and was named to the prefecture of the Nord. When in 1814 the senate deposed the emperor. Count Beugnot was made by the provisional government, minister of the interior. Upon the return of Louis XVIII. he had confided to him the general direction of the police; but this post went well nigh to cost him the friends he had made in the earlier period of his career. Amongst other things, the liberal party reproached him with having enforced the keeping holy of the Sabbath-day, and having permitted religious processions out of doors. In 1815 he became minister of marine, and during the Hundred Days followed Louis XVIII. to Ghent. After the second Restoration he occupied for a certain time the general direction of the post-office, but soon the small favour he enjoyed with the reigning party cost him all his appointments, and he was left without even a distinction, save that of the ministry of state—an empty title. Elected a deputy, he was one of the minority of 1815; and, re-elected at the end of the year, he still continued to sit on the opposition benches, but with a somewhat nearer leaning towards the ministry. In 1819 he was one of the foremost defenders of the liberty of the press, and as reporter of a special committee, was the chief cause of the throwing out of the bill upon the electoral law, known as the "proposition Barthelemy." This bill, however, defeated at first by a great majority, was, through the perseverance of the ministers, passed in 1820. In 1824 Count Beugnot resigned his seat, and was said to be about to be made a peer of France, but the letters of nomination to this dignity were not forthcoming even at the end of six years. M. Beugnot was not made a pair de France till after the 25th July, 1830, in the acts entitled technically les petites ordonnances; being at the same time named director-general of manufactures and trade. He wrote his "Memoirs," three fragments whereof only have as yet ever been published. M. Beugnot, who was courageous in 1791, was simply docile under the Empire, and mixed perhaps too much zeal with his docility; his natural moderation grew into mere scepticism, and yielded to self-interest. After the Empire, this scepticism increased, and expressed itself in undisguised raillery. M. Beugnot, who mainly helped to frame the Charte of 1814, no longer believed in the principles of freedom that had been those of his youth, and defended them only out of a species of decorum, but without any patriotic ardour. Count Beugnot, who was decidedly a clever man, was too entirely devoid of resolution to be ever entitled to be called a statesman; and passing from imperialism to monarchy, from constitutional government to emigration, exchanging liberal ideas for a jacobite policy, with the utmost ease, he was never anything beyond the witty adviser and agreeable servant of unstable powers, and the creature of circumstance.—B. de B.
BEUIL, Jean IV. de, a noted French commander, of noble birth, who combated with distinction the English forces in Guyenne and Languedoc, of which provinces he was lieutenant; killed at the battle of Agincourt, 1415. Duguesclin besought from this doughty warrior the honour of fighting under his banner. He was grand-master of the arbeletiers of France. The duke of Anjou, whom he accompanied in his expedition against Naples, appointed Beuil his executor.—J. S., G.
BEUIL, Jean V. Sire de, son of the preceding, a French warrior, who by a series of exploits extending over the period between the battle of Agincourt and the accession of Louis XI., merited the title of Fleau des Anglais. That monarch, with a gratitude which he rarely showed to a servant of his father, conferred on him the order of St. Michel. Died in 1470.—J. S., G.
BEULANIUS, the name of two British writers, father and son, the former of whom wrote about the year 600, "De Genealogiis Gentium." He was the instructor of Nennius. Samuel, the son, was born in Northumberland, but appears to have resided in the Isle of Wight, of which, adding his own observations to those of Ptolemy and Pliny, he left a description. He also wrote "Annotationes in Nennium;" a "Historical Itinerary;" and a work "De Gestis Regis Arthuri."—J. S., G.
BEUMLER, Marc, a learned Swiss, born at Volketswyl, in the canton of Zurich, 1555; died 1611. He acquired considerable reputation as a philologist and rhetorician. He translated several of the works of Demosthenes, Plutarch, and Cicero.
BEURNONVILLE, Pierre de Ruel, marquis de, marshal of France, born 1752; died 1821. In January, 1774, he entered as a simple volunteer in the regiment of the Isle of France, and gradually rose in the service till, as a reward of his services in the east, he was promoted to the rank of colonel in 1789. From this period he was employed under each successive government of France, and was advanced from one rank to another, until May, 1816, when he was named commander of the order of St. Louis and marshal of France. In 1817 he was created a marquis.—G. M.
BEURRIER, Paul, a French theologian and hagiologist, abbé of Saint Geneviève; born in 1610; died in 1696. His principal work is entitled "Homélies, Prônes on Meditations sur les evangiles des dimanches et principales fêtes," 1668.
BEURS, ____, was a pupil of Bloemart, who rivalled Both, in truth of design.—W. T.
BEURS, William, was born at Dort, 1656, and died 1690. He studied under Drillenburg, and made rapid progress; even as a youth, becoming known for his quick free hand and clear colour, but he was careless in his design. He tried to forget his bad drawing in bad taverns, but only forgot himself, and became poor and neglected. He at last set sail for Italy, but died as the vessel reached port.—W. T.
BEUTHER, Michael, a German philosopher and theologian; born at Carlstadt in 1522; studied theology under Luther and Melancthon. He held various offices in the service of the elector John Frederick, and in that of the elector palatine Otho Henry, and latterly established himself at Strasburg, where he held a professorship of history till his death in 1587. He wrote "Continuatio Historiæ Joannis Sleidani," and a great number of commentaries on classical authors.—J. S., G.
BEUTLER, Hans Heinrich Christian, born at Suhl, in the canton of Henneberg in Franconia, on the 10th October, 1759. He became professor of the school of Salzmann at
