was the author of several important propositions, and of amendments on the measures proposed by his opponents. Among others we may mention his proposal for advancing £16,000,000 on loan to the Irish railways, during the famine of 1846. As a leader in the sporting world his character stood deservedly high, on account of the zeal with which he strove to suppress the dishonest practices of the "turf." He died from a sudden seizure in the region of the heart, whilst walking in his father's park in Nottinghamshire, September 21, 1848.—E. W.
BENTINCK, Lord William Henry Cavendish, G.C.B., uncle of the above, was second son of the third duke of Portland, premier under George III. He was born in 1774, and entered the Coldstream guards in 1791. He was aid-de-camp to the Duke of York in Flanders, and to Lord Moira's expedition against the coast of France, and subsequently served in Italy and Egypt. From 1803 to 1808 he was governor of Madras, and in the latter year went to Portugal on the staff of Sir H. Burrard. He was present at Corunna, and held the command of a division in Lord Wellington's army, and was subsequently sent as British minister to the court of Naples, and commander-in-chief of the British forces in that kingdom, and in that capacity was enabled to prevail on King Ferdinand to grant his subjects the benefits of a free constitution. He next induced Tuscany to shake off the French yoke, and afterwards made a descent upon Genoa, which he captured. He sat in parliament for many years, between 1796 and 1826, in the tory interest, as member for Camelford, Nottinghamshire, and Ashburton. In 1827, he was sworn a privy councillor, and appointed governor-general of India in succession to Lord Amherst. His Indian career is remarkable only for the pacific policy which he adopted towards the native states, and the large reductions effected in the pay of European officials. He passed an enactment freeing from the accustomed penalties such inhabitants of the Bengal presidency as seceded from the Hindoo or Mahomedan faith, and gave a great impetus to the cause of education in India. Two projects of national importance were also undertaken during his tenure of office, the ultimate benefits of which can scarcely be overestimated—the opening up of a communication between British India, and the countries west of the Indus as far as the Caspian Sea, and the establishment of an overland communication between England and India, of which we shall have more to say when we come to speak of Lieutenant Waghorn. On returning to England in 1835, he was elected M.P. for Glasgow, which city he represented down to within a few days of his death. He died at Paris, June 17, 1839, in his 69th year.—E. W.
BENTIVOGLIO, Guido, was born at Ferrara in 1579. Having completed his studies at Padua, he returned to his native city in 1597, the same year in which Pope Clement VIII. had taken possession of it. Guido Bentivoglio, who was naturally of a supple and insinuating character, effected the reconciliation between that pontiff and Cæsar D'Este, who then assumed the title of duke of Modena. Clement VIII., appreciating the eminent qualities of Guido, sent him to Flanders, and afterwards to the court of Louis XIII. of France, as papal nuncio. The services he rendered to his sovereign in that capacity were considered of such importance, and his ability in diplomatic relations so prominent, that Paul V. elevated him to the cardinalate in 1621. His "History of the Wars of Flanders," written in Italian, is considered classic, and the impartiality with which he judges of men and things, has been praised even by his opponents. He has left his "Memoirs," containing the principal events which happened during his miniature in Flanders and France; and the richness of his diction, which is always elegant and pure, combined with the most remarkable simplicity in his narrative, makes them highly instructive and interesting to the reader. His correspondence has been published after his death, and shows how perfect he was in the epistolary style. His account of the Huguenots of France is considered, even by protestant writers, most veracious. As a diplomatist and a literary man, he has illustrated the century in which he lived, and in his numerous writings has given convincing proofs of his thorough knowledge of the human heart. At the death of his protector and friend, Urban VIII., he would have been raised to the papal throne, had he not been taken suddenly from the world during the meeting of the conclave on the 7th of September, 1644.—A. C. M.
BENTKOWSKI, Felix, a learned Pole, was born in 1781. He settled at Warsaw, where he was appointed professor of history, and librarian to the lyceum; and afterwards filled the chair of bibliography and history in the university, during the whole time of its continuance, from 1817 to 1831, when he was made keeper of the archives of the kingdom of Poland, which post he retained till his death in 1852. He was a man of great diligence and erudition, and gave the world a work by which he shall be long remembered, the "Historya Litteratury Polskicy" (History of the Literature of Poland), the standard work on the subject. It was published in 1814, in two vols. large 8vo. He also published "An Introduction to General History" in 1821, and a translation into Polish of Guizot's History of Civilization.—J. F. W.
BENTLEY, Richard, the famous critic, was born 27th January, 1661, at Oulton, near Wakefield, in Yorkshire. His father died when Richard was only thirteen years of age, and left a small estate, which he owned at Woodlesford, to a son by a previous marriage. His maternal grandfather took the youth in charge, while his mother had given him his earliest lessons in Latin. The first school he attended was at Methley, and after some time spent in the free school at Wakefield, he entered Cambridge at the age of fourteen, being admitted subsizar in St. John's college, 24th May, 1676. He took the degree of B.A., 23rd January, 1680, with such honours as belong to third wrangler, under the present arrangement. The next year he stood for a fellowship, but was unsuccessful—either, according to one account, because the statutes of St. John's college did not allow of more than two fellows from the same county, and his was already filled up; or, according to another account, because he was too young for priest's orders, being little more than nineteen years of age. But the fellows shortly afterwards nominated him to the head mastership of Spalding grammar school, and about a year afterwards, his college recommended him to Dr. Stillingfleet, dean of St. Paul's, as tutor to his son. He took the degree of A.M. July, 1683, and resided several years in London, engaging chiefly in philological studies, and gathering some acquaintance with Hebrew and its cognate tongues. He wrote out with his own hand, every word of the Hebrew Bible, and appended explanations in Chaldee, Syriac, Latin, and Greek, taken from Walton's polyglot. Such was his literary avidity, that he had sold a small family estate in order to enrich his library. After the Revolution, he went to Oxford with Bishop Stillingfleet's son, and was on the 4th of July, admitted to the degree of A.M. ad eundem; himself and his pupil becoming members of Wadham college. The Bodleian library opened its treasures for him, and he was at once distinguished by his laborious diligence and research. It was at Oxford, in 1691, that he published his first tract, &c., being a Latin epistle to Dr. Mill, containing critical remarks on Malelas, an old Syrian historian, whose dull Chronicle had been printed at the Sheldon press, under Mill's editorial care, from a copy in the Bodleian, the only one known to exist. This letter, which forms an appendix to the volume, is remarkably acute, and not very complimentary to some great names, but it exhibits that peculiar form of erudition of which Bentley afterward was so distinguished a master. On the 16th of March, 1689-90, Bentley had been ordained a deacon, and immediately after was appointed Bishop Stillingfleet's chaplain. It was at this time his good fortune to be nominated the first preacher of the Boyle lecture. Those sermons in which he preached a confutation of atheism, made a great sensation, and he published eight of them in 1693. They are somewhat hard, but powerful,—the product of a self-confident mind, that seeks not only to convince, but to overwhelm, not only to conquer, but to trample its antagonists under foot. One special cause of their popularity was Bentley's dexterous use of the recent Newtonian philosophy in the overthrow of atheism. The volume passed through numerous editions, and was translated into several languages. It is somewhat remarkable that this first Boyle lecture raised a dispute which has very recently occupied the public journals; Bentley asserting that the moon had no rotation on her own axis, but Keill, a shrewd and scientific Scotchman, replying that those phenomena on which the lecturer had built his argument, led directly to an opposite conclusion. In 1692, Bentley took priest's orders, and became a prebend of Worcester, and in 1694, he was re-appointed Boyle lecturer. The previous year he had been nominated keeper of the royal library at St. James, and it was while he held this office, that his first great literary controversy arose. In opposition to the opinions of Fontenelle and Perrault, the epistles of Phalaris and some other classic works had been eulogized by
