BELGRADE (54), the capital of Servia, on the confluence of the Save and Danube; a fortified city in an important strategical position, and the centre of many conflicts; a commercial centre; once Turkish in appearance, now European more and more.

BELGRA`VIA, a fashionable quarter in the southern part of the West End of London.

BELIAL, properly a good-for-nothing, a child of worthlessness; an incarnation of iniquity and son of perdition, and the name in the Bible for the children of such.

BELIEF, a word of various application, but properly definable as that which lies at the heart of a man or a nation’s convictions, or is the heart and soul of all their thoughts and actions, “the thing a man does practically lay to heart, and know for certain concerning his vital relations to this mysterious universe, and his duty and destiny there.”

BELINDA, ARABELLA FERMOR, the heroine in Pope’s “Rape of the Lock.”

BELISA`RIUS, a general under the Emperor Justinian, born in Illyria; defeated the Persians, the Vandals, and the Ostrogoths; was falsely accused of conspiracy, but acquitted, and restored to his dignities by the emperor; though another tradition, now discredited, alleges that for the crimes charged against him he had his eyes put out, and was reduced to beggary (505-565).

BELIZE, British Honduras, a fertile district, and its capital (6); exports mahogany, rosewood, sugar, india-rubber, &c.

BELL, ACTON.  See BRONTE.

BELL, ANDREW, LL.D., educationist, born at St. Andrews; founder of the Monitorial system of education, which he had adopted, for want of qualified assistants, when in India as superintendent of an orphanage in Madras, so that his system was called “the Madras system”; returned from India with a large fortune, added to it by lucrative preferments, and bequeathed a large portion of it, some L120,000, for the endowment of education in Scotland, and the establishment of schools, such as the Madras College in his native city (1753-1832).

BELL, BESSY, and MARY GRAY, the “twa bonnie lassies” of a Scotch ballad, daughters of two Perthshire gentlemen, who in 1666 built themselves a bower in a spot retired from a plague then raging; supplied with food by a lad in love with both of them, who caught the plague and gave it to them, of which they all sickened and died.

BELL, BOOK, AND CANDLE, a ceremony at one time attending the greater excommunication in the Romish Church, when after sentence was read from the “book,” a “bell” was rung, and the “candle” extinguished.

BELL, CURRER.  See BRONTE.

BELL, ELLIS.  See BRONTE.

BELL, GEORGE JOSEPH, a brother of Sir Charles, distinguished in law; author of “Principles of the Law of Scotland” (1770-1843).

BELL, HENRY, bred a millwright, born in Linlithgowshire; the first who applied steam to navigation in Europe, applying it in a small steamboat called the Comet, driven by a three horse-power engine (1767-1830).