possible to have introduced the penitentiary discipline of Auburn or Philadelphia into their own country. An improved method in French goals took place, however, upon the suggestions in the report. M. de Beaumont leaving to his more speculative friend the work of analysing political institutions, and to draw conclusions as to the future, devoted his attention to the state of society and manners, which he embodied in the graceful tale of "Marie ou l'esclavage," showing the fatal influence of slavery on the minds and morals of the masters themselves, who with shallow selfishness, fancy they profit by an institution which checks industry by degrading labour, and perverts the whole nature. This book abounds with instances of nice observation, forcible yet delicate delineation and portraiture, which for minute shading, shows the hand of a consummate artist. In 1835 M. de Beaumont visited Ireland, and was so struck with the misery of the people, that he determined upon probing out the cause. Having, on his return home, laboured for some time on the materials he had collected, he determined to pay a second visit to the country to complete his observations, which resulted in a work that told stern truths to all classes and parties. This work has happily been deprived of much of its interest by the utter change since wrought on the state of society; and yet as a historical record of what Ireland was before the famine, and before the encumbered estates court had dealt with mendicancy and property in a way which never entered into the heart of man to conceive, M. de Beaumont's book will prove of enduring value. In 1840 he was elected a member of the chamber of deputies, and took his seat on the side of the constitutional opposition—voting for reform. On the republic being proclaimed in 1848, he, along with his friend M. de Tocqueville, joined that section of moderate and firm republicans which was headed by General Cavaignac. Returned a member of the constitutional assembly, he was nominated by Cavaignac, who had become head of the government, ambassador to England, where it was his duty to carry out that policy of friendship, which, in the opinion of moderate republicans, became two countries taking the foremost lead in political freedom and civilization. As ambassadors are generally chosen amongst married men, who are expected to represent the gracious hospitality of their court, it becomes the more proper not to omit to state, that M. de Beaumont introduced to English society his cousin, the grand-daughter of the celebrated Lafayette, to whom he was united in 1836. It was while on a visit to M. de Beaumont, at the close of 1857, that General Cavaignac suddenly died. Under the imperial dynasty, there is, of course, no place in public life for this able and honest statesman.—J. F. C.
BEAUMONT, Elie de. See Elie de Beaumont.
BEAUMONT, Felix-Bellator, comte de, a French senator, born at Paris, 25th December, 1793. He was sent to the military school of St. Cyr in 1811, and the following year entered the service as sub-lieutenant in a regiment of infantry, with which he was engaged in the campaign of Russia. In March, 1813, he was raised to the rank of lieutenant. On the return of Napoleon from Elba, Beaumont rejoined his standard, and assisted at the battle of Waterloo. In 1826 he retired into private life, and devoted much of his leisure to agricultural pursuits. In 1839 he was elected to represent the department of the Somme in the chamber of deputies, where he joined the ranks of the opposition. In 1841 he was nominated a member of the council-general of agriculture; and in 1842 his fellow-citizens of Peronne honoured him with a double election, to the chamber of deputies, and to the council-general of the department. During the whole of his political career he showed himself the friend at once of order and of liberty. On the 26th January, 1852, he was called, by a presidential decree, to occupy a seat in the senate.—G. M.
BEAUMONT, Francis, poet and dramatist. FLETCHER, John, poet and dramatist.—We follow the example of former biographers in relating what is known of the lives of these distinguished men in one article.
Francis Beaumont, the third son of Sir Francis Beaumont, one of the justices of the common pleas, was born at Gracedieu, Leicestershire, in or about 1586. In February, 1596-97, he was, with two brothers, admitted a gentleman commoner of Broadgate's-hall, Oxford, on the site of which Pembroke college now stands. In 1600 he was entered a member of the inner temple. In 1602 he published some poems. In 1607 we find his name in connection with that of Ben Jonson, and some of Jonson's dramas are heralded by commendatory verses of Beaumont's. Their common love of the theatre brought him and Fletcher together, and they lived in the same house till Beaumont's marriage, the date of which is supposed to have been about 1613. His wife was Ursula Isley, or, as it is sometimes written, L'isle. Beaumont died on the 6th of March, 1615-16, at about the age of thirty. Of Beaumont's immediate family, several were remarkable for poetical talents.
John Fletcher, was born in December 1579, about fifteen years before his brother poet, whom he survived about ten years. Fletcher's father (Richard) is said by Fuller to have been a native of Kent. He was for a while incumbent of Rye in Sussex. He was dean of Peterborough at the time of the execution of Mary queen of Scots, and attended her to the scaffold. She refused his ministrations, which he to the last obtruded on her. In 1589 he was consecrated bishop of Bristol; in 1593 translated to Worcester, and in the next year to London. He now was unfortunate enough to lose the queen's good graces by marrying, and marrying a lady of very doubtful reputation. The bishop soon after died; it was said by some of vexation at the queen's displeasure; by others it was attributed to the immoderate use of tobacco. His death took place on the 15th of June, 1596. He is recorded as "a comely and courtly prelate, . . . condemned for being proud—such was his natural stately garb—by such as knew him not, and commended for humility by those acquainted with him." He left nine children, and died in distressed circumstances. John Fletcher entered Bennet college, Cambridge, 15th October, 1591. He was resident at Cambridge in 1593, but how long he remained, and whether he took any degree, is uncertain. Little more seems known of him than the dates of his plays. He died in 1625, a victim to the plague. As Fletcher's earliest publications were before his union with Beaumont, and as he worked for the theatre long after Beaumont's death, it has been often a subject of inquiry—why the united works have been always called by the name of Beaumont and Fletcher, thus giving precedence to the writer whose share was least in the collected works. Mr. Dyce's account of the matter is this, that during Fletcher's life only three of ten plays were published by him as joint productions; that in these either Beaumont had the larger share, or that natural feelings of courtesy made him place the name of his deceased associate before his own; and that such arrangement being made with reference to a few dramas, was naturally followed by the editors who succeeded with the collected works. The name of the "firm," once fixed in the public ear, no one thought of disturbing.—(Dyce's Beaumont and Fletcher.)—J. A., D.
BEAUMONT, Sir George Howland, whose name now stands for the type of convention in landscape painting, was born in 1753. He was descended from Bohemond, the son of Robert Guiscard, the crusader, who, with Godfrey de Bouillon, took Jerusalem, performing the deeds of the devil in the name of God. Connected by birth with the royal blood of England and France, the dilettante baronet of Coleorton could also boast of his descent from Fletcher's friend, and the bard of Bosworth Field. Showing even at Eton a taste for drawing, he became also celebrated for his skill at private theatricals. In 1784 he married the daughter of Chief-Justice Willes, who pleased him by her admiration of his acting, was painted by Sir Joshua Reynolds, and started for the grand tour. This made him an authority and an artist. He studied nature a little, Claude a great deal, and began to paint. Wilson, who was just dead, he thought highly of, and preferred him, in spite of his inferior colour, to Gainsborough, not caring much about village scenes, unless they were in the grand style. "Wilson," he said, "is often meagre, artificial, and artless. Mr. Gainsborough has a fascinating spirit, and a splendour of colour." On his return from Italy, Beaumont, too liberal and eclectic for those days, offended Reynolds by his free criticisms on Titian's want of drawing, and Buonarotti's extravagance. He now became professed painter, as well as professed critic, and hoped to unite Claude's level sunshine with red-nosed Wilson's classical dullness, but he was too rich to do anything. He used to lament that Reynolds had not studied landscape, and used to teaze Wilson by abusing Claude's chimney-piece figures. Coleorton became a home for artists to sneer and brag in, and in London he associated much with Reynolds, Gainsborough, and West. In 1790, when every lamppost was turned into an altar on which to offer victims to the red-shod goddess of liberty. Sir George went to Paris to see his
