BOULEVARDS -BOUNTY. 



645 



claims to B., but, in 1641, relinquished their preten- 

 sions to the bishop of Liege for 150..000 Brabant 

 guilders. In the war of 1672, France conquered B., 

 and Louis XIV. gave it, in 1678, to the chevalier La 

 Tour d'Auvergne, his chamberlain. After this time, 

 it belonged to the house of La Tour until the revolu- 

 tion, when it was taken from them, in 1792. The 

 last possessor, Godfrey Charles Henry de la Tour 

 d'Auvergne, died December, 1812. By the peace 

 of Paris, in 1814, the dukedom was included in that 

 of Luxembourg, which had fallen to the king of the 

 Netherlands. The title of prince of B. was assumed, 

 in 1792, by Philip d'Auvergne, captain in the British 

 navy, and he continued to bear it till his death, in 

 1816. The congress which met at Vienna in 1815, 

 appointed commissioners to investigate the compara- 

 tive claims of this nobleman and prince Charles of 

 Rohan. They decided in favour of the latter. 

 BOULEVARDS. See Paris. 



BOULOGNE; an old seaport town on the coast of 

 Picardy, now chief town of an arrondissement of 388 

 square miles, with 74,676 inhabitants, in the depart- 

 ment Pas de Calais, at the mouth of the Liane ; lat. 

 50 43' 33" N. ; Ion. 1 36' &9 1 E. It consists of the 

 upper and lower town ; the latter of which is called 

 Boulogne sur Mer, and is far superior to the former 

 in the beauty of its houses and streets. Both parts 

 contain together above 16,000 inliabitants, and about 

 1000 houses. With a favourable wind, vessels can 

 reach the coasts of England in two or three hours 

 from this place. Bonaparte, therefore, ordered the 

 harbour to be made deeper, and a number of vessels 

 to be built, in order to transport the army intended 

 for the invasion of England, and some small forts 

 and batteries to be erected, in order to strengthen the 

 harbour and the town. A large army remained here 

 for many months in a camp, which almost resembled 

 town, waiting to embark; when, -upon the breaking 

 out of hostilities with Austria, 1805, they were called 

 to other places. B. is a bishopric, contains six 

 ci lurches, an hospital, an exchange, a maritime court, 

 a society for the promotion of agriculture, commerce, 

 and the arts, a school for instruction in navigation, 

 sea baths, manufactories of soap, earthen-ware, linen 

 and woollen cloths. Herring and mackerel, large 

 quantities of which are caught off the coast, Cham- 

 pagne and Burgundy wines, coal, corn, butter, linen 

 ami woollen stuffs, are the articles of export. Steam- 

 boats now run between this place and England. 



BOULOGNE, WOOD OF ; a pleasant grove near the 

 gates of Paris, mentioned in many of the French 

 romances. The greater part of the old trees were 

 destroyed during the revolution. When Napoleon 

 chose St Cloud for a summer residence, he ordered 

 young trees to be planted, had the place enclosed 

 with a wall, and the wood stocked with game, so that 

 it became more a place of resort than before. From 

 July, 1815, to September, the British troops under 

 the duke of Wellington were stationed in it, and cut 

 down the most beautiful trees, old and young, for 

 barracks. For a long time, it has been the dueling 

 ground of the Parisians. Here was many a partie 

 tine ; and gay equipages and horsemen often enliven- 

 ed the place. Through the principal walk the pious 

 world made pilgrimages to Longchamps. Here 

 Montgolfiers (balloons) were first raised. Cuvier dis- 

 covered, by geological investigations, that the soil of 

 the wood is alluvial. Petrified trunks of trees are 

 found in it at a great depth, as are also the bones of 

 elephants, oxen, elks, and other mammalia. The 

 wild plants of the place are only those which prefer 

 a rich alluvial soil. The little castles of Madrid and 

 Bagatelle lie near the wood, which no traveller should 

 omit seeing. 

 BOULTON, Matthew, a celebrated engineer, was 



born at Birmingham in 1728. After being educated 

 at a grammar school, he was instructed in drawing 

 by Worlidge, and he also studied mathematics. He 

 engaged in business as a manufacturer of hardware, 

 and, as early as 1745, he is said to have invented, 

 and brought to great perfection, inlaid steel buckles, 

 buttons, watch-chains, &c., of which large quantities 

 were exported to France, whence they were repur- 

 chased with avidity by the British, as " the offspring 

 of French ingenuity." In 1762, B., finding his ma- 

 nufactory at Birmingham too confined for his pur- 

 poses, purchased a lease of the Soho, about two miles 

 distant, in She county of Stafford. This spot, then a 

 barren heath, was gradually converted into an ex- 

 tensive manufactory and school of the mechanical 

 arts, where ingenious men found ample employment 

 for their talents from the liberal patronage of the 

 patriotic proprietor. The introduction of that impor- 

 tant machine the steam-engine, at Soho, led to a 

 connexion between B. and James Watt, of Glasgow, 

 who became partners in trade in 1769. Among the 

 many great undertakings in which these gentlemen 

 were engaged, one of the most useful and important 

 was the improvement of the coinage. In beauty and 

 accuracy of execution, the coins struck at the Soho 

 manufactory have rarely been surpassed; and the 

 reform thus effected in the state of the British na- 

 tional currency confers the highest honour on those 

 with whom it originated. About the year 1773, was 

 invented, at the establishment of Boulton and Watt, 

 a method of copying, by a mechanical process, paint- 

 ings in oil, so as to produce fac-similes of the origin- 

 als, sufficiently accurate to deceive a practised con- 

 noisseur. The various mechanical inventions and 

 improvements which originated, more or less directly, 

 from the genius and application of B., are too nu- 

 merous to admit of specification. His long life was 

 almost uninterruptedly devoted to the advancement 

 of the useful arts, and the promotion of the commer- 

 cial interests of his country. He died at Soho, Aug. 

 17. 1809, and was interred in the parish-church of 

 Handsworth. Six hundred of his workmen attended 

 his funeral, each of whom had a silver medal pre- 

 sented to him, which had been struck for the occa- 

 sion. He was a fellow of the royal societies of 

 London and Edinburgh, and an associate of several 

 scientific institutions abroad. His manners and con- 

 versation are said to have been highly fascinating, 

 and his private character was extremely respectable. 

 He left an only son, who succeeded him in his estab- 

 lishment at Soho. See his Memoirs, published at 

 Birmingham, 8vo. 



BOUNTY, in political economy, is a reward or pre- 

 mium granted to particular species of trade or pro- 

 duction. The general subject of encouragement of 

 domestic, in competition with foreign, industry or 

 trade (which is one species of industry), will be treated 

 of under other heads, and only those circumstances 

 mentioned, in this place, which distinguish bounties 

 from other species of encouragement. And it is to 

 be observed, in the first place, that the general prin- 

 ciple is the same, whether the encouragement is 

 given to a particular species of education, as that in 

 the clerical profession, which has been the subject ot 

 encouragement, direct or indirect, time immemorial ; 

 or education in general ; or a particular kind of lite- 

 rary productions, as the best poetical composition ; or 

 a treatise on some scientific subject, as one on light 

 and heat ; or to some agricultural or manufactured 

 product, as in the case of the premiums formerly 

 granted by England on the exportation of wheat, 

 and those given oy agricultural societies in America, 

 for the greatest production of any kind of grain on a 

 given extent of land, or the best threshing or win- 

 nowing machine, &c. In all these instances, the 



