BER`MONDSEY, a busy SE. suburb of London, on the S. bank of the Thames.

BERMOO`THES, the Bermudas.

BERMU`DAS (15), a group of 400 coral islands (five inhabited) in mid-Atlantic, 677 m.  SE. of New York; have a delightful, temperate climate, and are a popular health resort for Americans.  They produce a fine arrowroot, and export onions.  They are held by Britain as a valuable naval station, and are provided with docks and fortifications.

BERNADOTTE, JEAN BAPTISTE JULES, a marshal of France, born at Pau; rose from the ranks; distinguished himself in the wars of the Revolution and the Empire, though between him and Napoleon there was constant distrust; adopted by Charles XIII., king of Sweden; joined the Allies as a naturalised Swede in the war against France in alliance with Russia; became king of Sweden himself under the title of Charles XIV., to the material welfare, as it proved, of his adopted country (1764-1844).

BERNARD, CLAUDE, a distinguished French physiologist, born at St. Julien; he studied at Paris; was Majendie’s assistant and successor in the College of France; discovered that the function of the pancreas is the digestion of ingested fats, that of the liver the transformation into sugar of certain elements in the blood, and that there are nervous centres in the body which act independently of the great cerebro-spinal centre (1813-1878).

BERNARD, ST., abbot of Clairvaux, born at Fontaines, in Burgundy; pronounced one of the grandest figures in the church militant; studied in Paris, entered the monastery of Citeaux, founded in 1115 a monastery at Clairvaux, in Champagne; drew around him disciples who rose to eminence as soldiers of the cross; prepared the statutes for the Knights-Templar; defeated Abelard in public debate, and procured his condemnation; founded 160 monasteries; awoke Europe to a second crusade; dealt death-blows all round to no end of heretics, and declined all honours to himself, content if he could only awake some divine passion in other men; represented in art as accompanied by a white dog, or as contemplating an apparition of the Virgin and the Child, or as bearing the implements of Christ’s passion (1091-1174).  Festival, Aug. 20.

BERNARD, SIMON, a French engineer, born at Dole; distinguished as such in the service of Napoleon, and for vast engineering works executed in the United States, in the construction of canals and forts (1779-1839).

BERNARD OF MENTHON, an ecclesiastic, founder of the monasteries of the Great and the Little St. Bernard, in the passage of the Alps (923-1008).  Festival, June 15.

BERNARD OF MORLAIX, a monk of Cluny, of the 11th century; wrote a poem entitled “De Contemptu Mundi,” translated by Dr. Neale, including “Jerusalem the Golden.”

BERNARDIN DE SAINT-PIERRE, commonly called Saint-Pierre simply, a celebrated French writer, born at Havre; author of “Paul and Virginia,” written on the eve of the Revolution, called by Carlyle “the swan-song of old dying France,” (1739-1814).