BELLA, Stefano de la, engraver, was born at Florence in 1610. He was apprenticed to a goldsmith; but some prints of Callot having fallen into his hands, he began to turn his attention entirely towards engraving, and studied the art under Canta Gallina, who had also been the instructor of Callot. By the liberality of Lorenzo de’ Medici he was enabled to spend three years in study at Rome. In 1642 he went to Paris, where Cardinal Richelieu engaged him to go to Arras and make drawings of the siege and taking of that town by the royal army. After residing a considerable time at Paris he returned to Florence, where he obtained a pension from the grand duke, whose son, Cosmo, he instructed in drawing. He died in 1664. His productions were very numerous, amounting to over 1400 separate pieces.

BELLADONNA, Dwale, or Deadly Nightshade(Atropa BdlaΛonnay, a tall bushy herb of the natural order Solanace<n, growing to a height of 4 or 5 feet, having leaves of a dull green colour, with a black shining berry fruit about the size of a cherry, and a large tapering root. The plant is a native of Central and South Europe, extending into Asia, and it is also found in waste places and hedgerows of Britain, though it is a doubtful native. The entire plant is highly poisonous, and accidents not unfrequently occur through children and unwary persons eating the attractive-looking fruit. Its leaves and roots are largely used in medicine, on which account the plant is cultivated, chiefly in South Germany, Switzerland, and France. Both roots and leaves contain the poisonous alkaloid atropia, but in practice the roots only are employed for its extraction. The proportions in which atropia is present in the roots range between 0 ’ 6 and 0 ’ 25, the roots of young plants being always richest in the alkaloid. The percentage found in leaves is much more uniform, being about 0’47, and extracts and tinctures of the leaves are therefore of much more constant strength than if prepared from roots. Preparations of belladonna and atropia are used in medicine as anodynes in local nervous pains,—atropia being frequently hypodermically injected but rarely taken internally. They are also of great value in ophthalmic practice on account of their peculiar property of producing dilatation of the pupil, either when painted around or dropped into the eye. Belladonna is also used as an antispasmodic in hooping-cough and spasmodic coughs generally, and for various other medicinal purposes. A remarkable antagonism between the physiological action of atropia and the alkaloid of the calabar bean ...

BELLAMY, Jacobus, a Dutch poet, was born at Flushing in 1757. He was apprenticed when young to a baker, but his abilities were discovered by a clergyman named De Water, who exerted himself in the boy’s behalf, and obtained sufficient assistance to send him, in 1782, to the University of Utrecht. In 1785 appeared his Vaderlandsche Gézangen , which at once gained him the highest reputation as'a poet. Three years previously a small volume of his, Gezangen mijner Jeugd, published under the pseudonym Zelandus, had attracted considerable attention. His longest and, in the opinion of many, his best work is the poetic romance Roosje, 1784. Bellamy was one of the first to create a new and original literature in Holland; his songs have had wide circulation and great popularity.

BELLARMINE (Ital. Bellarmino), Robert Francis Romulus, Cardinal, Catholic theologian and polemic, was born, October 4, 1542, at Montepulciano, in Tuscany. He was destined by his father for state service, but his inclinations were too strong to be restrained, and at the age of eighteen he entered the Society of Jesus. After studying in various colleges for some years, he was appointed by the order to lecture on theology at the famous university of Louvain. His seven years’ residence in the Low Countries brought him into close relations with modes of thought differing essentially from his own, and so compelled him to define his theological principles more clearly and sharply than before. On his return to Italy he received from Gregory XIII. an appointment in the newly-founded Collegium Romanum, and began to deliver lectures on the principal points of difference between the Roman Catholic and other forms of faith. Out of these lectures grew his famous work, Disputationes de Controversiis Christianes Fidei adversus hujus temporis Hoereticos (3 vols., 1581, 1582, 1593), for long the finest polemical writing on the Catholic side, and still worthy of consideration. It was replied to at the time by Chemnitz, Gerhard, and Charnier, and continued for many years to furnish occasions of attack to Protestant theologians. So highly were Bellarmine’s abilities rated, that he was selected to accompany, in the capacity of divine or theologian, the legation sent into France in 1590 by Sixtus V. In 1599 he was, much against his will, raised to the dignity of cardinal, and two years later was made archbishop of Capua. He resigned the archbishopric in 1605, being detained in Rome by the desire of the newly-elected Pope Paul V. About the same time he had a con- ∙oversy with James I. of ...

BELLAY, Joachim du, an eminent French poet and member of the Pleiad, was born late in 1524, at Lyré, on the left bank of the Loire, not far from Angers. In the absence of documents we are thrown upon the autobiographical passages in his poems for information about the events of his life, and these, fortunately, are copious. From these, and especially from the beautiful Latin elegy addressed to his friend Jean Morel, we learn that, deprived early of both his parents, he was left to the mercy of an elder brother, who allowed him to be brought up without other education than what his own ardent spirit supplied. Before he reached manhood this brother also died, and Joachim found himself at the head of the family, a vigorous, manly, but half-cultured youth. Suddenly he was struck down by illness; and, confined for many months to his bed, he softened the long hours of suffering by fervent study; he now read the Latin and Greek poets for the first time, and felt a passionate desire to imitate them in French. In 1548, having to a great measure recovered his health, he happened to meet Ronsard in an inn in Poitiers, and a friendship instantly sprang up between them that ceased only with Du Bellay’s death. He joined the six poets, who, under Dorat, were forming a society, the Pleiad, for the creation of a French school of Renaissance poetry; and his first contribution to it was a prose volume, the famous Deffence et Illustration de la Langue française, which remains one of the earliest and most perfect pieces of literary criticism in existence, and overweighs in positive value much of his actual poetry. This appeared in 1549, and was followed within a twelvemonth by two volumes in verse, the Recueil de Poésie, and the collection of lovesonnets called L ’ Olive. The latter ...