BYNG-BYRON.

BYRON.

This event,

The husband's habits were profligate in the highest | father's house, and refused to return.
degree, and the wife's fortune was soon squandered
in the debauch and at the gambling-table. Sepa-
rated from her husband, the lady retired to the city
of Aberdeen with her little lame boy, whom she
passionately loved, her sole income at this time being
about £130 per annum. In his 11th year, B. suc-
ceeded his grand-uncle, William Lord Byron; and
mother and son immediately left the north for New-
tead Abbey, the ancient seat of the family, situated
a few miles distant from Nottingham, in the romantic
district which Sherwood Forest shadowed, and which
was once familiar with the bugle of Robin Hood.
On succeeding to the title, B. was placed in a private
school at Dulwich, and thereafter sent to Harrow.
The most remarkable thing about B.'s early years
was his extraordinary attachments. Like almost
every member of the poetic tribe, he had a passion |
for the name of Mary.' In his 8th year, in Aber-
deenshire, he fell in love with Mary Duff. Margaret
Parker, a cousin of his own, and who died early, was
his next idol. His strongest passion was, however,
for Mary Chaworth. This lady he first met when on
a visit to Newstead in 1803, at which date he was
in his 15th year. Miss Chaworth's father had been
killed in a duel by Lord Byron, the grand-uncle of
the poet, and marriage would have healed the family
feud, and would have joined rich estates. But it
was not to be. Miss Chaworth was B.'s senior
by two years, and evidently felt little flattered by
the worship of the lame Harrow boy. Next year
came the parting interview described in The Dream,
with which every Englishman is familiar now as
with a personal experience. In 1805, B. removed
to Trinity College, Cambridge; and two years there- |
after his first volume of verse, entitled Hours of
Idleness, was printed at Newark. The poems therein
contained were not absolutely without merit, but
they might have been written by any well-educated

from the celebrity of one of the parties, caused con-
siderable excitement in the fashionable world. B.
became the subject of all uncharitable tongues.
The most popular poet, he was for a space the most
unpopular individual in the country. In one of his
letters, written from Italy some years later, referring
to the slanders current at the time, he thus expresses
himself: 'I was accused of every monstrous vice
by public rumour and private rancour. My name,
which had been a knightly or a noble one since my
fathers helped to conquer the kingdom for William
the Norman, was tainted. I felt that if what was
whispered, and muttered, and murmured was true,
I was unfit for England; if false, England was unfit
for me. I withdrew.' The separation from his wife,
and the departure from England, mark a stage in
B.'s genius. A new element of power had entered
into his verse; the reader feels it quite distinctly in
the magnificent burst of exultation that opens the
third canto of the Childe—

Autograph of Byron.

lad, who, in addition to ordinary ability, possessed the slightest touch of poetic sensibility. The volume was fiercely assailed by Lord (then Mr.) Brougham in the Edinburgh Review, and his sarcasms stung B. into a poet. The satire, English Bards and Scotch Reviewers, was written in reply to the article in the Edinburgh, and the town was taken by a play of wit and a mastery of versification unequalled since the days of Pope. In the babble of praise that immediately arose, B. withdrew from England, visited the shores of the Mediterranean, and sojourned in Turkey and Greece. On his return in 1812, he published the first two cantos of Childe Harold, with immense success, and was at once enrolled among the great poets of his country. During the next two years, he produced The Giaour, The Bride of Abydos, The Corsair, and Lara. While these brilliant pieces were flowing from his pen, he was indulging in all the revelries and excesses of the metropolis. What was noblest in the man revolted at this mode of life, and, in an effort to escape from it, he married Miss Milbanke, daughter of Sir Ralph Milbanke, a baronet in the county of Durham. This union proved singularly infelicitous. It lasted only a year, and during that brief period, money embarrassments, recriminations, and all the miseries incident to an ill-assorted marriage, were of frequent occurrence. After the birth of her child Ada, Lady Byron retired to her

At the close of

'Once more upon the waters, yet once more! Misery and indignation stimulated him to remarkable activity. Six months' stay at Geneva produced the third canto of Childe Harold and The Prisoner of Chillon. Manfred and The Lament of Tasso were written in 1817. The next year, he was at Venice, and finished Childe Harold there; and, in the gay and witty Beppo, made an experiment in the new field which he was afterwards to work so successfully. During the next three years, he produced the first five cantos of Don Juan, and a number of dramas of various merit, Cain and Werner being opposite polès. In 1822, he removed to Pisa, and worked there at Don Juan, which poem, with the exception of The Vision of Judgment, occupied his pen almost up to the close of his life. Morally, his Italian life was unsatisfactory, and his genius was tainted by his indulgences. his career, he was visited by a new inspiration ; the sun, so long obscured, shone out gloriously at its setting. In the summer of 1823, he sailed for Greece, to aid the struggle for independence with his influence and money. He arrived at Missolonghi on the 4th of January 1824. There he found nothing but confusion and contending chiefs; but in three months, he succeeded in evoking some kind of order from the turbulent patriotic chaos. His health, however, began to fail. On the 9th April, he was overtaken by a shower while on horseback, and fever and rheumatism followed. Medical aid was procured, and copious bleeding recommended; but this, B., with characteristic wilfulness, opposed. Before death, he sank into a state of lethargy, and those who were near heard him murmuring about his wife, his sister, and his child. After twenty-four hours' insensibility, he expired on the evening of the 19th April 1824. His body was conveyed to England; and, denied a resting-place in Westminster Abbey, it rests in the family vault in the village church of Hucknall, near Newstead.

Lord B. is a remarkable instance of the fluctuations of literary fashion. Elevated to the highest pinnacle of fame in the heyday of his early popularity, he was unduly depressed after his death, when the false romance which he threw around himself and his writings began to wear away; and it is only during the last ten or twelve years that the proper place has been found for him in the public estimation. He is high, but not the highest. The resources of his intellect were amazing. He gained his first reputation as a depicter of the gloomy and stormful passions. After he wrote Beppo, he was surprised to find that he was a humorist; when he reached Greece, he discovered

BYRON BAY-BYTTNERIACEÆ.

an ability for military organisation. When all the school-girls of England fancied their handsome idol with a scowling brow and a curled lip, he was laughing in Italy, and declaring himself to be the most unromantic being in the world. And he was right. Take away all his oriental wrappings, and you discover an honest Englishman, who, above all things, hates cant and humbug. In Don Juan and his Letters there is a wonderful fund of wit, sarcasm, humour, and knowledge of man. Few men had a clearer eye for fact and reality. His eloquence, pathos, and despair; his Manfreds and Childe Harolds, were only phases of his mind. Toward the close of his life, he was working toward his real strength, and that lay in wit and the direct representation of human life. If his years had been extended, he would in all likelihood have deserted poetry for prose, gaudy coloured fiction for sober fact; and the assertion may be hazarded, that the English novel would have boasted of another and a greater Fielding.

BYRON BAY lies on the north-east coast of Labrador in North America, its lat. and long. being respectively 54° 40′ N., and 57° 30′ W.

BYRON ISLAND is situated in the Mulgrave Archipelago of the Pacific Ocean, its lat. and long. being respectively 1° 18' S., and 177° 20′ E.

BY'SSUS, a name given from ancient Greek and Roman times to the bundle of silky filaments by which many lamellibranchiate mollusks-bivalve shells-attach themselves to rocks or other fixed substances. The B. springs from a cavity at the base of the solitary foot of the mollusk, and its filaments, which are capable of being reproduced if destroyed, are secreted by a glandular tissue which occupies a

furrow running nearly to the extremity of the foot. They are united together at the base in a common mass, and are often considerably divergent. They are guided to their place by the foot, and expand into a sort of disc at the point of attachment, so as to have a firm hold. A few common mussels in an aquarium readily afford an opportunity of observing the B., particularly when the filaments are attached to the glass-sides of the vessel. In the Pinna (q. v.) of the Mediterranean, the B. is remarkably long and delicate, has a beautiful silky lustre, is very strong, and is capable of being woven into cloth, upon which a very high value is set; but the animal which produces it is now so rare, that it is almost exclusively an article of curiosity. This manufacture was known to the ancients.

Byssaceae, and placed among Lichens. Some have
regarded this group as entitled
to the rank of a distinct order,
comprehending the filamentous
fungi found in cellars, and simi-
lar plants;' but others reject
the genus as altogether spurious.
Some of the species once included
in it have now been satisfac-
torily shewn to be Lichens, others
to be Confervace, whilst many
appear to be really not distinct Black-rock Byssus
vegetable forms, but cryptogamic (Byssus nigra).
plants prevented by unfavour-
able circumstances from proper development. The
green incrustations formerly regarded as species of
B., have been found to be the primary germination
of mosses, often species of Polytrichum and Tortula.
It cannot be said, however, that the nature of all
the vegetable forms which have been referred to
the genus B., has yet been satisfactorily ascertained.
Some of them are very phosphorescent, and are
generally found where some higher form of vegeta-
tion is undergoing decay.

BYSTRÖM, JOH. NIKOLAUS, a celebrated sculptor, was born 18th December 1783, at Philippstadt, in the province of Wermeland, Sweden, and educated under Sergell of Stockholm. In 1809, he obtained the highest prize in the Swedish Academy of Arts, and in the following year went to Rome, where he executed his first independent work, a 'Drunken Bacchus,' and sent it home. It was received with great approbation, and B. was compelled to repeat it thrice. In 1815, he returned to Stockholm, and surprised the newly elected crown-prince by exhibiting a colossal statue of himself, which he had finished all but the head in Rome, and which he had found means to complete quietly in Stockholm. The crown-prince was highly gratified, and commissioned B. to execute colossal statues of Charles X., XI., and XII. B. returned to Rome, but has since taken up his residence in Stockholm. His chief works are: A Nymph going into the Bath,' 'A reclining Juno, suckling the Young Hercules,'' Hygieia,'' A Pandora combing her Hair,'' A Dancing-girl,' a statue of Linnæus, and colossal statues of Charles XIII., Gustavus Adolphus, and Charles XIV. B. excels in the delineation of females and children, but his male figures want strength of character; his conceptions are always true to nature, his grouping skilful and pleasant, and his execution is clear and distinct.

BYTTNERIACEÆ, a natural order of exogenous plants, sometimes united with the order Sterculiacea (q. v.), and also closely allied to Malvacea (q. v.), from which it differs, especially in the stamens not being columnar-although more or less united, generally into a cup or tube-also in the anthers being turned inwards, and 2-celled. The species of this order are trees, shrubs, or half-shrubby plants, abounding chiefly in tropical climates, although some are natives of the temperate zones. About 400 have been described. The flowers of many are beautiful. The most important product of the order is Cocoa (q. v.). The fruit of Guazuma ulmifolia, a native of Brazil, is eaten, being filled with a sweet and pleasant mucilage. The young bark of this tree yields, when macerated, a copious mucilage, and is BYSSUS (Gr. a fine flaxen or silky substance), therefore used in Martinique for clarifying sugar, as a genus established by Linnæus to include some is that of Kydia calycina in the northern provinces of the lowest and most obscure forms of vege- of India. Guazuma ulmifolia was introduced into tation, and defined as having a substance like fine India, and at one time largely cultivated in the down or velvet. simple or feathered. Botanists Madras presidency, under the name of Bastard sometimes ranked it among Algae, sometimes among Cedar, that its foliage and young shoots might Fungi; it has been made the type of a group be employed as fodder for cattle. Its straight,

BY-TOWN-BYZANTINE ART.

luxuriant young branches yield a strong fibre. The consequently in Germany, where the subject has bark of other species of this order also affords a received more attention than in this country, the tough fibre, which is employed for making cordage, | particularly that of Microlana (or Schillera) spectabilis in the regions on the southern base of the Himalaya, Abroma augustum in various parts of India, Dombeya spectabilis in Madagascar, and D. umbellata in the Isle of Bourbon. Abroma augustum has been especially recommended to attention and cultivation on account of its fibre, which is beautiful, white, fine, and strong, and is produced in great abundance. The plant grows to be a handsome small tree, having hairy lobed leaves and beautiful drooping purple flowers; but may be treated much as willows grown for basket-making, and in this way yields two, three, or even four crops of cuttings annually, which are peeled and the bark macerated in order to the separation of the fibre. BY-TOWN, a town of Upper Canada, on the Ottawa, taking its name from Colonel By of the Royal Engineers. It is now Ottawa (q. v.), the capital of United Canada.

BYZANTINE ART. From the time of Constantine the Great, the emperors of the East arrogated to their imperial city the pre-eminence which, for so long a period, ancient Rome had actually possessed; and, as a necessary consequence of this assumption, Constantinople, or Byzantium, as it still continued sometimes to be called, became the rival of the mother-city in the richness and variety of its artistic monuments. In Rome, and, indeed, in the whole of Western Europe, the first effect produced by the influx of the mighty stream of barbarian life, and the consequent dissolution of existing society, was the almost total suppression of artistic effort. It was then that the artists of the West, willing and eager to avail themselves of the invitation held out to them, poured into Constantinople, carrying with them what yet remained of the artistic life of the ancient world. Byzantium was the hearth on which, during the dark period of the middle ages, those feeble sparks of ancient art were kept alive, which served to kindle the new and independent artistic life of the modern world. Not only were the painters and sculptors of Italy indebted to the art of Byzantium for the tradition of that ideal mode of conception to which the term classical is peculiarly applied, but artists in every department derived thence the elements of that technical knowledge without which the embodiment of such conceptions is impossible. This practical acquaintance with the technical rudiments of their respective arts, which could scarcely have been derived from a mere examination of ancient works, was communicated to the fathers of Italian art by living Byzantines, some of them probably the descendants of those whom barbarian conquests had driven into the East, and whom the conquests of a still more barbarous race now restored to Western Europe. It is impossible to doubt that modern art was largely indebted to this circumstance for the marvellous stride which it took immediately after the taking of Constantinople by the Turks. But though its chief' value may consist in its having thus transmitted to us the succession of antiquity, B. A. was by no means devoid of original and individual character; and it is only in so far as it possesses this, and not when regarded as a mere conservation of antique types and processes, that it takes rank as a school of art. The characteristic element in B. A. may be described as the earliest artistic recognition and representation to the senses of what was new and peculiar in Christian as opposed to heathen life. To the fullest extent to which it could claim a separate and individual existence, B. A. was Christian art; and

two terms are frequently used as synonymous. The appearance of B. A., in this its only peculiar sense, dates from the age of Justinian. i. e., from the earlier half of the 6th c., and its productive period may be said to terminate with the conquest of the Eastern Empire by the Crusaders in 1204. But though its declension dates from this event, B. A. continued to exist in considerable vigour down to the final destruction of the Empire of the East in 1453; and even now may be seen as the inseparable handmaid of the Greek Church, both in Europe and in Asia. It is in this point of view, and more particularly as forming the basis of artistic life in Russia, that B. A. possesses its chief living interest in our day. What Rome was to the Western, Byzantium was to the Eastern European; and the relation of the latter to later date, continued during the whole period of the his mother-city, if it commenced at a somewhat middle ages.

Though the inhabitants of Eastern Europe thus derived their traditions of antiquity from a meaner source than the Romanic nations, they received them more unbroken; and, from first to last, were subjected to their influences during a much longer period. To them the living voice and hand continued to communicate what for nearly a thousand years Italians, Spaniards, and Franks had had to seek in the dead image and letter alone; and if anything still remains unrecorded of ancient thought, it doubtless dwells on Greek, and not on Roman or German tongues. Indolent, luxurious, and dissolute as their ancestors had been in classical times, the citizens of Constantinople. were distinguished by an intellectual character, which, unfruitful and enfeebled though it was, was systematic, subtle, mystical, and pedantic. They were eminently an instructed people; but, like individuals whose glory is in the past, they were more conservative than original; and, however justly we may despise the chaff which they engendered, it is impossible to overestimate the value of the corns of gold which clung to their memories.

BYZANTINE ARCHITECTURE. The typical form of B. Architecture, at least as applied to ecclesiastical

BYZANTINE ART-BYZANTINE EMPIRE.

advance in the order of time, the earliest Christian works, and those immediately suggested by the antique, exhibiting such faults only to a limited extent. Down to the 12th c., the defects which we have described were the worst which could be laid to the charge of B. sculpture, and it is scarcely earlier than the 13th c. that it assumes that mummy-like aspect by which it is too generally known. The art of carving in ivory was practised with great success at Constantinople, and in the examples of it which remain, the gradual decline—the benumbing process, as it has been aptly called-may be traced with great distinctness. Of this species of work, in its earlier and better times, a fine specimen in alto-rilievo of the forty saints' may be seen in the museum at Berlin. The decorations of the churches, and of the sacred vessels used in the service of the altar, formed no insignificant objects of art in the better Byzantine period. Cups, plates, lamps, candlesticks, crosses, and the like, were either of gold or silver, and frequently adorned with jewels; whilst the altar itself, the chancel, and sometimes the whole interior of the church, were covered with precious metals, the panels being adorned with mosaics or frescoes.

BYZANTINE PAINTING. The same characteristics

capital, and of a vastly greater number of eccle- | delighted. The execution is careful, even painful siastical structures with which the provinces were All this becomes more and more the case as we adorned by the pious emperor. The style thus introduced largely influenced the architecture even of Western Europe; and in St. Mark's at Venice, the churches at Ravenna and elsewhere on the Adriatic, and even in the cathedral of Aix-laChapelle, we have examples of churches almost purely Byzantine. The fundamental principle in the construction of Byzantine churches was an endlessly varied application of the Roman arch, whilst its exhibition in the form of the cupola was their most characteristic feature. In the St. Sophia, as was generally the case, the cupola covered the principal central portion of the church, and was supported by strong and lofty pillars, bound together by bold arches. To this central space were usually joined others of smaller size, which were covered by half-cupolas or arches of more ordinary construction. Though frequently in the form of a Greek cross, with the great cupola rising in the centre, and smaller or semi-cupolas surmounting the four arms, neither this nor any other plan was consistently adhered to in Byzantine churches. The windows were always semicircular, similar to those in the Romanic churches of Germany, and in our Own Saxon or early Norman churches; but the doors were frequently square-headed, after the classical model. Many of the details, such as the square capitals tapering Byzantine Column. downwards, and the bold projecting mouldings ornamented with foliage, seem to have owed their origin entirely to the ingenuity of Byzantine architects. The earlier Byzantine churches were profusely ornamented with mosaics, which, after the admixture of the Gothic element, and the adoption of the pointed arch, gave place to fresco-paintings, The constant use of the Apse (q. v.) is, after the cupola, perhaps their most marked feature. The following division into periods, though, like most divisions of the kind, somewhat arbitrary, has the authority of M. Couchaud, an eminent French architect, in its favour, and is, apparently, adopted by Parker: 1. From the time of Constantine to the middle of the sixth c.; 2. From the beginning of Justinian's reign down to the 11th c., which comprises the greater part of the existing buildings of the pure Byzantine type; 3. From the 11th c. to the conquest of Greece by the Turks, when the influence of the Venetian conquests is apparent in the intermixture of Italian and Gothic details and characteristics.

which we have ascribed to the sculpture belonged to the pictorial efforts of the artists of Byzantium, and of the neighbouring countries who were mostly their imitators. The execution was careful and anxious rather than skilful, and such skill as still remained was exhibited in the mechanical perfection with which the gilding of the backgrounds and other details were managed. Of B. in Italy, and belong especially to the school of pictures, the best existing specimens are to be found Sienna. The picture of the Virgin in the church of St. Domenico at Sienna by Guido, bearing date 1221, deserves special mention. Much labour was expended on the illumination of MSS. of the Scriptures, and of these many beautiful examples, as fresh as when they were painted, may be seen in most of the larger public libraries of Europe. The chief interest attaching to B. painting consists in the parental relation in which it stood to the art of heir; and in the works of Giotto, Leonardo da Vinci. Italy. Cimabue may be regarded as its immediate Pietro Perugino, and even of Raphael in his earlier time, the traces of the inheritance are quite unmis

takable. See PAINTING.

BYZANTINE EMPIRE, also styled the EAST ROMAN, EASTERN, or GREEK EMPIRE, was founded in 395 A. D., when Theodosius the Great, at his death, divided the Roman Empire between his two sons, Arcadius and Honorius. The former, a weak and luxurious character, was made emperor of the eastern division, formerly included under the preBYZANTINE SCULPTURE. When contrasted with fectures of the East and of Illyricum-namely, Syria, the ignoble, tasteless, and meaningless productions Asia Minor, and' Pontus, stretching along the shores of the later plastic art of Rome, that of Constan- of the Black Sea in Asia; Egypt in Africa; and tinople claims both admiration and respect. The Thrace, Moesia (now Bulgaria), Macedonia, Greece, figures are not deficient in dignity either in and Crete in Europe. Arcadius left the government form or in attitude, and a deeply Christian spirit is of the empire in the hands of his minister, Rufinus, traceable both in their general conception, and in from whom it passed to the eunuch Eutropius, and their rich and significant spmbolical accompani- afterwards to Gainas, the murderer of Rufinus. ments. In sculpture, as in architecture, the pecu-Gainas fell by his ambition in 401, and the shameless liar Byzantine type first exhibits itself towards and avaricious Empress Eudoxia ruled until the the beginning of the 6th century. Alongside of unmistakable reminiscences of the antique, it exhibits characteristics which are as unquestionably oriental. The figures are positively laden, not with drapery alone, but with costume, which obscures the nobler and freer lines in which the ancients

time of her death, 404. See ARCADIUS. After Theodosius II., a minor under the guidance of the prefect Prætorio Anthemius, had held the reins during six years, he resigned the government in favour of his sister Pulcheria (Augusta), who ruled powerfully while her brother was kept apart from all state