the metropolis. Two of these were the countess of Charleville and Lady Holland. The third was Lady Blessington, whose salons became the centre of all that was brilliant, witty, and learned throughout the kingdom. From Leamore Place, Lady Blessington removed in 1836 to Gore House, Kensington, previously the abode of Wilberforce, where she continued till 1849, and here her soirees were even more attractive and brilliant than at Leamore Place. The expense in which this mode of life involved Lady Blessington—to which Count D'Orsay, the husband of her step-daughter, from whom he was separated, and the inmate of Gore House, not a little contributed—was beyond her means, and she was forced to break up her establishment and retire to Paris in 1849. Here she took up her abode in the Rue de Cirque, near the Champs Elysées, upon the 3rd of June. The following day she was suddenly attacked with an apoplectic malady and disease of the heart, of which she expired. She was buried in a mausoleum designed by Count D'Orsay, put above the village cemetery of Chambourg, in which the remains of the count were placed three years afterwards. Two inscriptions to her memory, one by Barry Cornwall, the other by W. S. Landor, are placed on the wall near her sarcophagus.
As a writer. Lady Blessington cannot be assigned a high place in literature. Without much originality or power, she nevertheless wrote with liveliness, spirit, and occasionally with elegance. She had a vein of quiet humour which now and then runs through a descriptive passage, and a knowledge of life and character which, if not deep, was enough to enable her to catch and pourtray the more salient and superficial traits of society. Such qualifications united to the most charming manners, good taste, the best nature, the happiest flow of conversation, and a high social position, gave her literary productions a success that without them they would not have achieved. We may well doubt, that of all she has written, more than one or two works have the materials of vitality in them. Lady Blessington did not commence her authorship at an early age. She was thirty-two when her first work, "The Magic Lantern," was published. It is, perhaps, her best production, and reached a second edition. "Sketches and Fragments" followed in the same year, 1822. The "Journal of Conversations with Lord Byron" appeared in the New Monthly Magazine in 1832, and was republished in a collected form. This was the period in which she occupied herself most assiduously in literary labour as a means of support in aid of her expensive establishment, and between that period and 1840 she wrote about twelve novels, most of them in three volumes, besides various contributions to periodical literature. She also wrote verses occasionally, of which the best that can be said is, that they were the production of a beautiful, witty, and fashionable peeress. Now that the grave has closed on the merits and the faults of Marguerite, countess of Blessington, we can remember with pleasure that the adulation of the learned and the fulsome praises of the pretenders to learning, never spoiled her nature. They left her heart warm, her affections true, and secured her friends to her through all changes.—J. F. W.
BLEULAND, James or Jan, a Dutch physician, born at Utrecht, took his degree at Leyden in 1780, practised at first at Gouda, became professor of anatomy, physiology, surgery, and midwifery at Harderwyk in 1792, and in 1795 obtained a similar professorship at Leyden. He is the author of numerous works on medical and anatomical subjects, principally relating to the organs of digestion.—W. S. D.
BLICHER, Steen Steensen, one of the most distinguished of the modern Danish lyric poets and novelists, was born in October, 1782, at Vium in the diocese of Viborg, the very centre of Jutland, where the wild heath-country borders on the cultivated land. His father and forefathers had all been clergymen for four generations. In his childhood and youth he was extremely delicate, and when about nineteen fell into what was considered a hopeless consumption, from which, however, he cured himself by an extraordinary mode of treatment. He took to dancing and playing on the flute. Beyond this he engaged himself as tutor in a family on the island of Falster, where he indulged in hunting, shooting, and other country sports. This mode of treatment, strange as it may seem, completely renovated his health, and in three years he returned home, no longer an invalid. After having accomplished his academical studies, during which time he served with great bravery in the corps of students at the bombardment of the city, he became teacher in the grammar-school at Randers, and the same year married. Like many of the young spirits of the age, both in England and the north, he had imbibed the new doctrines of poetry, in course of which he learned English and translated Ossian. His salary, however, was very small, and his family increasing, he gave up teaching and removed to his father's, where for eight years he managed his parsonage farm and qualified himself for a clergyman. Here he gained such practical knowledge of rural economy, as enabled him to write several valuable works on various branches of this science. Amongst other benefits to his native country, he was the cause of extensive planting over its naked and dreary districts. Finally, he himself took orders, and entered upon his sacred duties in 1819. His first living, however, produced so small an income that in 1825 he removed to that of Spentrup and Gassum in the diocese of Aarhus, where he spent the remainder of his days. Living apart from the capital, and attached to no poetical school or literary coterie, Blicher was known only for some time as the successful translator of Ossian and the Vicar of Wakefield. He published two volumes of poems in 1814 and 1817, but they, though evincing deep poetical feeling, excited but little attention in comparison with his "Judske Romanzer" (Tales of Jutland), which at once seized on the public mind, and made a lasting impression. It is upon these tales, which paint the life and manners of the Jutland peasantry, and depict with photographic fidelity the peculiarly wild, desolate, and stern character of the landscape, that his fame will rest. Blicher's tales are contained in five, and his poems in two volumes.—M. H.
BLIGH, Sir Richard Rodney, G.C.B., a British admiral, born in 1737. He was descended from an old family in Cornwall, and was the stepson of the famous Admiral Rodney, under whose protection he was early sent to sea. He was made post-captain in 1777, and saw a good deal of active service. His most celebrated exploit was his encounter, when in command of the Alexander, 74, with a French squadron, consisting of five line-of-battle ships, three frigates, and a large corvette. For several hours the Alexander carried on an unequal contest with three of the French ships in succession, inflicting on them great damage before she struck her colours. The Alexander's loss amounted to about 40 men killed and wounded, while two of the French vessels lost about 450 officers and men. Sir Richard, before his death, attained the rank of admiral of the red. He died in 1821.—J. T.
BLIGH, William, Admiral, was distinguished for his severe sufferings, his indomitable perseverance, his active services, and the tumultuous scenes in which his lot was cast. It appears by the register of St. Andrews, Plymouth, that William, son of Francis and Jane Bligh, was baptized in that church, October 4, 1754. Francis, the admiral's father, was the son of Richard Bligh of Tinten, a duchy estate in St. Tudy, a few miles from Bodmin, Cornwall. The first public mention which occurs of the subject of this memoir is found in Captain Cook's voyages; Bligh having, as sailing-master, during a period of four years, accompanied that great navigator in the ship Resolution. In August, 1787, when Bligh was about thirty-three years of age, he was appointed commander of H.M. ship Bounty, a vessel of 215 tons burthen, fitted out by the English government, under the auspices of King George III., for the purpose of conveying from the South Sea Islands, to the West Indies, plants of the bread fruit-tree, in order that their growth might be attempted in Jamaica and other West India islands, for the support of the slave population. Bligh landed with his men at Tahiti (then called Otaheite), and, after a stay of twenty-three most agreeable weeks, quitted the island with an abundance of well-chosen and carefully-stowed plants. Whilst passing Tofoa, one of the Friendly Isles, on the 28th April, 1789, a mutiny broke out among some of the ship's company, with Fletcher Christian, the master's mate, at their head. Bligh was suddenly awoke at break of day, rudely hurried from his cabin, in his shirt, and tied to the mainmast. In a few minutes afterwards he was forced, with eighteen men, into the ship's launch, which was cut adrift; and the Bounty, with twenty-five men on board, was taken under the command of Christian.
Whatever may have been said of the tyranny of Bligh, of which no credible or uncoloured evidence has ever been given, it seems pretty clear that other causes led to this atrocious act, unsurpassed as it was in treachery, disloyalty, and cruelty. Independently of Bligh's own testimony, and the affidavits made by him and his companions, as to facts connected with the mutiny, the following remarkable circumstances are to be considered.
