322 



BOOK-TRADE BOTTA. 



trutiuns of tin- Litany; Tributes to tlie Dead, 

 Epitaphs tor 1 Vrsons of all ages and circumstances, 

 . Dr Booker died at Bower Ashton, near 

 Bristol, on the 1st Oct. 1835. 



BOOK-TRADE (a.) In 1836, the taxes aflect- 

 ing books were >onu '\vliat diminished : 1st, By the 

 duty on paper having tieen i educed from thrce- 

 per pound to three halfpence; and, 2d, By 

 it.- having been enacted \\wtjioe only, instead ot 

 eleven, copies of new works should be furnished, 

 at the expen-e of authors and publishers, to public 

 libraries. The duty on the importation of foreign 

 books, printed since the year 1801, has been re- 

 duced from 5 a cwt. to '2. 10s., with this proviso, 

 that the books be in foreign living languages, a 

 condition inserted to prevent classical grammars, 

 dictionaries, &c., from being supplied from the con- 

 tinent. 



BOOMERANG; a missile instrument used by 

 the Australian aborigines. It is of hard wood, 

 about the size of a common reaping-hook, but 

 shaped like the line described by the ridge of a 

 hay-stack: in scientific language, the shape is a 

 parabola. It is about two and a half inches broad, 

 a third of an inch thick, and two feet long, the 

 extremities being rounded. One side is flat ; the 

 other is rounded ; and it is brought to a bluntish 

 edge. Altogether, the thing resembles the letter 

 A, but with a rounded top, and no stroke across. 

 The Boomerang is taken by one end, with the 

 bulged side downwards, and the convex edge for- 

 ward, and thrown directly onward, as if to hit some 

 one standing thirty yards in advance. Instead of 

 going directly forward, as might be expected, and 

 there falling to the earth, it slowly ascends in the 

 air, whirling round and round, in a figure which 

 suggests the well-known armorial bearings of the 

 Isle of Man, and describing a curved line of pro- 

 gress, till it reaches a considerable height ; when 

 it begins to retrograde and finally it sweeps over 

 the head of the projector, and falls behind him. 

 This surprising motion is produced by the bulged 

 side of the missile. The air, impinging thereon, 

 lifts the instrument in the air, exactly as, by hitting 

 the oblique bars in the wheel of a wind-mill, it 

 forces that wheel to go round. It is one of the 

 ancient instruments of war of the Australian abori- 

 gines. They are said to be very dexterous in hit- 

 tini: binU with it. 



BOOTHROYD, BENJAMIN, D.D., pastor of 

 the Independent Church at Highfield Chapel, Hud- 

 dersfield ; an eminent Hebrew scholar, who died 

 Sept. 8, 1836; aged 68. He had been forty-two 

 years in the ministry, twenty-four of which were 

 passed at Pontefract, and the latter eighteen at 

 Huddersfield. In 18101813, he published a 

 quarto edition of the Hebrew Scriptures in quar- 

 terly parts; and previously, in 1807, a "History 

 of the ancient Borough of Pontefract," where he 

 was then a printer and bookseller. 



BOROLAWSKI, COUNT; a celebrated Polish 

 dwarf, was born in 1739, and died at his residence, 

 the Bank's Cottage, near Durham, Sept. 5, 1837, 

 at the great age of ninety-eight. His height was 

 short of thirty-six inches, though his person was 

 of complete symmetry. In former years, he tra- 

 velled on the continent, as well as in Great Bri- 

 tain ; but about forty years before his death, he 

 was persuaded by the prebendaries of Durham to 

 take lip his residence in the above cottage for life, 

 and they engaged to allow him a handsome income, 

 which was continued till his death. He excelled 



as a wit and humorist; was acquainted with sev- 

 eral languages; and his company was much courted. 



BOTTA, CARLO, a distinguished Italian his- 

 torian, was born in ITi'.G, in the town of Sun 

 Giorgio, in Piedmont. He studied medicine in the 

 university of Turin, where he obtained his de- 

 grees. The first events of the French revolution 

 having excited the minds of many (especially young 

 people) in the countries bordering upon France, 

 Bottu partook of the feelings of the times in fa- 

 vour of reform and the improvement of social or- 

 der. The expression, perhaps inconsiderate, of 

 these sentiments led to his arrest in \~'.)-2, but he 

 was released two years after, when he resolved 

 upon emigrating to France. There he was em- 

 ployed in his professional capacity with the French 

 army, styled "of the Alps," which afterwards re- 

 ceived the appellation of the army of Italy. In 

 the train of these forces he re-entered his country 

 in 1796, and next year he followed a division sent 

 by Bonaparte to the Ionian islands. There he 

 wrote a description of the island of Corfu, which 

 be published on his return to the continent. In 

 1799, he was named by General Joubert one of the 

 provisional government of his native country Pied- 

 mont. The advance of Suwarrow obliged him to 

 retire once more into France, but after the battle 

 of Marengo he was appointed by Bonaparte to be 

 a member of the executive commission, to which 

 the temporary administration of Piedmont was en- 

 trusted ; and, after the annexation of that territory 

 to the French empire, he was elected in 1804, to 

 represent the department of the Dora in the i 

 lative corps. Appointed vice-president in 1808, 

 he found his legislative office to be a mere sinecure 

 under a monarch so jealous of his authority, and 

 he employed his forced leisure in completing his 

 History of the North American Revolution, which 

 he published at Paris in 1810. By the restor- 

 ation of Piedmont to the king of Sardinia, Botta's 

 nominal legislative functions ceased ; he was ap- 

 pointed, in March, 1815, rector of the academy of 

 Nancy; but on the second restoration, he lost his 

 situation, and from that time till his death, he 

 lived privately at Paris, without any employment 

 or pension from government. It was then that he 

 gave himself up entirely to his favourite object, of 

 recording, for the use of posterity, the vicissitudes 

 and calamities of his native country, during the 

 five-and-twenty years that elapsed from the French 

 revolution to the first abdication of Napoleon at 

 Fontainebleau, and the consequent capitulation of 

 Mantua in April, 1814. 



Botta was not unaware of the difficulties that 

 awaited him in the execution of his task. Having 

 determined to write the undisguised truth, as far 

 as his mental powers and his means of information 

 would allow, to speak with frank sincerity, not 

 only of princes and ministers, but also of the peo- 

 ple, to spare no party, to flatter 110 friend, and to 

 calumniate no enemy, he communicated his inten- 

 tion to his acquaintances, most of whom observed 

 to him in reply, that " he either would not have 

 the boldness, or would not be able to effect his 

 purpose ; and lastly, that supposing the design prac- 

 ticable, he ought not to put it into execution." He 

 persisted, however, and having thrown the gaunt- 

 let to men of all parties, ultras and liberals, pa- 

 triots and tramontanists, religionists and free- 

 thinkers, he took his chance with the public ; the 

 numerous editions of his book, the avidity with 

 which it has been read from one end of Italy tc 



