Page:Dictionary of National Biography, Second Supplement, volume 1.djvu/168

 bays measuring 60 feet square and each surmounted by a concrete dome. A fourth bay nearest the nominal east forms the sanctuary and beyond it is an apse. The nave is flanked on each side by an aisle; outside the aisles are the many chapels. When first opened for worship, and before any progress had been made with the marble decorations, the interior effect was a triumph of pure form. The construction was remarkable, Bentley having set himself to avoid any structural materials but brickwork, masonry, and concrete. 'I have broken,' he said, 'the back of that terrible superstition that iron is necessary to large spans' (Memoir by in Architectural Review, xi. 115). In 1898 Bentley was summoned to the United States to advise on the design and construction of the Roman catholic cathedral at Brooklyn, for which he prepared a scheme.

Seized in November 1898 with paralytic symptoms, which in June 1900 affected his speech, he died on 2 March 1902 at his residence, The Sweep, Old Town, Clapham Common, the day before his name was to be submitted to the Royal Institute of British Architects for the royal gold medal (R.I.B.A. Journal, ix. 219). He was buried at Mortlake.

Bentley had married in 1874 Margaret Annie, daughter of Henry J. Fleuss, a painter, of Düsseldorf, and had four sons and seven daughters, of whom one son and one daughter died in infancy, and the remainder survived him. His third son, Osmond, succeeds, in partnership with Mr. J. A. Marshall, to the architectural practice, and his eldest daughter, Mrs. Winifred Mary de 1'Hopital, is engaged on her father's biography. There is in the possession of the family a portrait in oils by W. Christian Symons.

 BERGNE, JOHN HENRY GIBBS (1842–1908), diplomatist, born in London on 12 Aug. 1842, and descended from a French family originally resident in Auvergne, which settled in England after the French revolution, was elder son of John Brodribb Bergne, a valued member of the foreign office for fifty-six years (1817–1873), who acquired a high reputation both at home and abroad as an authority on matters connected with treaties and diplomatic precedent. Educated at schools at Brighton and Enfield and at London University, where he passed the first B.A. examination, John Henry entered the foreign office as a clerk on the diplomatic establishment after passing a competitive examination in 1861, was appointed an assistant clerk in 1880, and promoted to be superintendent of the treaty department in 1881. He held that office until 1894, when he became superintendent of the commercial department and examiner of treaties. This position he held for eight years, doing much valuable work in the development of the commercial department and particularly in the arrangement of its relations with the board of trade, and in introducing a more regular and complete system of reports on commercial and industrial subjects from diplomatic and consular officers in foreign countries. He was occasionally employed abroad on business which came within the sphere of his permanent work, and on which he was possessed of special knowledge. In 1875 he assisted the British agent before the international commission, which sat under Article XXII of the treaty of Washington, to assess the amount to be paid by the United States to Great Britain in return for the fishery privileges accorded to the citizens of the United States under Article XVIII of that treaty, and on the meeting of the commission at Halifax in 1877 he acted as secretary and protocolist to it. In September 1887 he was appointed secretary to Mr. Joseph Chamberlain's special mission to Washington to adjust certain questions relating to the North American fisheries. For his services he received the K.C.M.G. in 1888, having been made C.M.G. in 1886. In 1885 he had been second British delegate at the international copyright conference held at Berne, and signed the convention which was there agreed upon (9 Sept. 1886). While at Washington in 1887 he was deputed to discuss the copyright question with the United States department of state. In May 1896 he signed at Paris as British delegate the additional act to the international copyright convention of 1886. He was appointed a member of the departmental committee on trade marks in 1888, and was sent as British delegate to the conference on industrial property held at Rome in 1888, at Madrid in 1890, and at 'Brussels in November 1897 and again hi 1900. From 1898 onwards he was constantly employed in the negotiations for the abolition of 