The New International Encyclopædia/Van Bemmel, Eugene

VAN BEMMEL. vän bēm'ēl, Eugene, Baron (1824-80). A Belgian author and educator, born at Ghent. He studied law, but turned to literature, and in 1846 attracted considerable attention by his De la langue et de la poésie provençales. In 1849 he was called to the chair of French literature at the University of Brussels, where subsequently he lectured on modern political history, archæology, and comparative literature. He was secretary of the Society of Belgian Authors and first director of the Revue de Trimestrielle, which he founded in 1854 and which in 1864 became the Revue de Belgique. In 1871 he was made rector of the University. Besides the work mentioned above and many contributions to periodicals, Van Bemmel published: Voyage à travers champs: la province de Luxembourg (1849): L'harmonie des passions humaines (1854); La Belgique illustrée (1855); Etude sur les monuments druidiques (1857); Histoire de Saint Josse-ten-Noode (1869); L'Ourthe et l'Amblève pittoresques (1873); Patria Belgica (1871-75); Don Placide: mémoires du dernier moine de l'Abbaye de Villers (1876), a novel; Histoire de Belgique empruntée textuellement aux récits des écrivains contemporains (1880). He died in Brussels.