BALUE, CARDINAL, minister of Louis XI.; imprisoned, for having conspired with Charles the Rash, by Louis in an iron cage for eleven years (1421-1491).

BALUCHISTAN, a country lying to the S. of Afghanistan and extending to the Persian Gulf.  See Beluchistan.

BALZAC, HONORE DE, native of Tours, in France; one of the most brilliant as well as prolific novelwriters of modern times; his productions remarkable for their sense of reality; they show power of observation, warmth and fertility of imagination, and subtle and profound delineation of human passion, his design in producing them being to make them form part of one great work, the “Comedie Humaine,” the whole being a minute dissection of the different classes of society (1799-1850).

BALZAC, JEAN LOUIS GUEZ DE, born at Angouleme, a French litterateur and gentleman of rank, who devoted his life to the refinement of the French language, and contributed by his “Letters” to the classic form it assumed under Louis XIV.; “he deliberately wrote,” says Prof.  Saintsbury, “for the sake of writing, and not because he had anything particular to say,” but in this way did much to improve the language; d. 1685.

BAMBAR`RA (2,000), a Soudan state on the banks of the Upper Niger, opened up to trade; the soil fertile; yields grain, dates, cotton, and palm-oil; the natives are negroes of the Mohammedan faith, and are good husbandmen.

BAMBERG (35), a manufacturing town in Upper Franconia, Bavaria; once the centre of an independent bishopric; with a cathedral, a magnificent edifice, containing the tomb of its founder, the Emperor Henry II.

BAMBINO, a figure of the infant Christ wrapped in swaddling bands, the infant in pictures surrounded by a halo and angels.

BAMBOROUGH CASTLE, an ancient fortress E. of Belford, on the coast of Northumberland, now an alms-house.

BAMBOUK (800), a fertile but unhealthy negro territory, with mineral wealth and deposits of gold, W. of Bambarra.

BAMIAN`, a high-lying valley in Afghanistan, 8500 ft. above sea-level; out of the rocks on its N. side, full of caves, are hewn huge figures of Buddha, one of them 173 ft. high, all of ancient date.

BAMPTON LECTURES, annual lectures on Christian subjects, eight in number, for the endowment of which John Bampton, canon of Salisbury, left property which yields a revenue worth L200 a year.

BANBURY, a market-town in Oxfordshire, celebrated for its cross and its cakes.

BANCA (80), an island in the Eastern Archipelago, belonging to the Dutch, with an unhealthy climate; rich in tin, worked by Chinese.

BANCROFT, GEORGE, an American statesman, diplomatist, and historian, born in Massachusetts; his chief work “The History of the United States,” issued finally in six vols., and a faithful account (1800-1891).

BANCROFT, HUBERT, an American historian, author of a “History of the Pacific States of N. America”; b. 1832.