BELLEVILLE, a city of the United States of America, capital of the county of St Clair in Illinois, situated about 14 miles S.E. of St Louis on a rising ground, in the midst of a fertile district. It is a thriving commercial and manufacturing city, well supplied with water, and in the immediate neighbourhood of coal deposits. Its industrial establishments comprise breweries, flour-mills, distilleries, foundries, and a woollen factory, and it possesses a courthouse, banks, a high school, a convent for the education of young ladies, and various other institutions. There is a sufficient number of German inhabitants to maintain one daily and two weekly papers in their native language. Population in 1870, 8146.