BENGALI 



686 



BEN LOMOND 



sometimes sufficient to form fresh islands, 

 which after a time are washed away by the 

 sea. 



BENGALI, bengah'le, one of the modern 

 languages of India, spoken by about 50,000,- 

 000 people in Bengal. Related to the Sanskrit, 

 it is written in characters derived from that 

 language, and it also possesses many words 

 borrowed from the Sanskrit. The name Ben- 

 gali is an English form, its native form being 

 Banga-Bhasa. Its grammar bears a resem- 

 blance to the modern Persian and to some 

 degree to the English. Of the several Bengali 

 dialects, that spoken at Calcutta is the stand- 

 ard. Bengali literature dates from the begin- 

 ning of the fifteenth century; the greatest 

 name in its history is that of Rabindranath 

 Tagore, the poet who received the Nobel prize 

 for literature in 1913. He writes in English, 

 however, as well as in Bengali. See SANSKRIT 

 LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE; TAGORE, RABIN- 

 DRANATH. 



BENGOUGH, bengoff', JOHN WILSON (1851- 

 ), a Canadian caricaturist, journalist and 

 poet, and also known as one of the leaders 

 of the single tax movement. He was born 

 in Toronto, and after receiving a grammar 

 school education began the study of law, which 

 he soon dropped for journalism. In 1873 he 

 established in Toronto a humorous weekly 

 called The Grip, most of whose illustrations 

 were drawn by himself. For nearly twenty 

 years this paper held a unique place in Cana- 

 dian life, and Bengough's good-humored, yet 

 sometimes sharp, wit exposed the weaknesses 

 of many Canadian statesmen. After 1892 he 

 contributed to various Canadian and English 

 newspapers, and also devoted much of his time 

 to lecturing in Canada, Great Britain, Aus- 

 tralia and the United States. He has written 

 some excellent verse, and is the author of the 

 famous election song, Ontario, Ontario. Among 

 his publications are Popular Readings, Orig- 

 inal and Selected; Caricature History of Can- 

 adian Politics; Motley: Verses Grave and Gay. 

 The Up-to-Date Primer, A First Book of 

 Lessons jor Little Political Economists, is a 

 humorous exposition of the single tax theory. 

 He was appointed an associate of the Royal 

 Canadian Academy of Arts upon the forma- 

 tion of that institution in 1880. 



BEN-HUR, a novel by General Lew Wallace, 

 of which over 1,000,000 copies have been sold. 

 The dramatic .version produced in 1899, nine- 

 teen years after the book first appeared, was 

 also very popular, and the spectacular features, 



particularly the magnificent chariot race which 

 Bcn-Hur won against terrible odds, later made 

 it a striking and successful moving-picture 

 play. 



The scene of the story is laid in the time of 

 Christ, and its hero is a young Jew, Ben-Hur, 

 who by reason of the enmity of Messala is 

 wrongly convicted of a crime and sentenced to 

 slave in the Roman galleys. His adoption 

 by the Roman commander Arrius; his return 

 to Palestine to seek his mother and sister; the 

 furious contest with his old enemy in the 

 chariot race, and his final conversion to Chris- 

 tianity make a powerful dramatic story. 



BEN'JAMIN, the youngest and favorite son 

 of Jacob, and a brother of Joseph. No finer 

 story was ever written than that of Joseph and 

 Benjamin, beginning with Genesis XLII. The 

 name means son oj my right hand. 



He became the founder of the Benjamites, 

 who in the march through the Wilderness had 

 the honor of being placed next to the Taber- 

 nacle. The land assigned the Benjamites was 

 between that of Ephraim on the north and 

 Judah on the south. The territory was small 

 but important, since it was the key to the 

 entrance to the Promised Land from the east. 

 The Benjamites were famous warriors, and the 

 tribe contained many men noted for their skill 

 in the use of the left hand. The Benjamites 

 were nearly destroyed in a war which they 

 waged against all the other tribes of Israel 

 (see Judges XIX-XXI), but later they recov- 

 ered their strength and at the division of the 

 kingdom united with Judah. 



BENJAMIN, JUDAH PHILIP (1811-1884), an 

 American lawyer and statesman, commonly 

 known during the War of Secession as "the 

 brains of the Confederacy." His parents were 

 English Jews and he was born in the West 

 Indies, but when still a child was taken to 

 Wilmington, N. C. After studying at Yale he 

 was admitted to the bar in New Orleans in 

 1832, and soon rose to a high rank in his pro- 

 fession. Elected to the United States Senate 

 in 1852, he was active in the Southern cause 

 and with the secession of Louisiana in 1861 

 withdrew from the Senate. His pronounced 

 ability as Attorney-General and as Secretary of 

 State in the Cabinet of the Confederacy won 

 him the name referred to above. At the close 

 of the war he went to London, where he built 

 up a large practice and acquired an enviable 

 reputation. 



BEN LOMOND, ben lo' mund, a mountain in 

 the west-central part of Scotland, made famous 



