Page:Imperial Dictionary of Universal Biography Volume 1.pdf/394

BAL committee of science in the council of the Royal Irish Academy, of which body he subsequently became treasurer, a chartered office of high position and trust in the academy. The Botanical Society of Edinburgh and the Ray Society appointed him local secretary for Dublin, and he was a member of the Royal Society. He also filled the post of secretary to the Geological Society of Ireland, and, subsequently, became its president; and he was one of the original founders of the Dublin Statistical Society. Upon the death of Dr Whitle Stokes, Ball was appointed in 1840 to succeed him as director of the museum of the university of Trinity college, Dublin, and upon that occasion, he presented to the college his very valuable collection of the natural history of Ireland. In the year 1850, the university conferred upon him the honorary degree of doctor of laws. Dr. Ball was president of the Dublin University Zoological and Botanical Association, and was appointed president of one of the sections of natural history at the meeting of the British Association in Dublin in 1857. Unfortunately, however, before the period arrived for him to occupy this honourable position, his life was terminated somewhat suddenly, after having been only a few days ill. He died on the 30th of March, 1857.—J. F. W.  BALLANCHE,, a French writer, born at Lyons in 1776. His writings, both in prose and poetry, are of a strangely mystical character, the meaning of which would probably have been allowed to rest in undisturbed obscurity, only for the stir given to particular kinds of inquiry by the Revolution of 1848. It was then that dreamers after a political millennium, of whose approach they saw signs, found prophetic indications of the great social era in the enigmatical language of Ballanche. It is a pity that the author did not live a little longer to correct or confirm the readings of his interpreters. During his lifetime he enjoyed the esteem of Chateaubriand, and of the choice circle which clustered round the once beautiful Madame de Récamier, who admired the choice language, if they failed to comprehend the abstruse meaning of "Antigone" and "Orpheus," or the revelations of "Hebal," a Scottish chief, who, by virtue of the gift of second sight, beholds humanity putting on new forms. The day Ballanche was received into the academy, he found himself unable to overcome his recluse shyness so as to read his own address, which a friend read for him. He suffered under some defect of speech, which made him an unwilling talker. He died 12th June, 1847.—J. F. C.  BALLANTYNE,, partner with Sir Walter Scott in the celebrated printing business, the failure of which involved the last years of the great novelist's life in unexpected calamity, was educated at Kelso, where in 1795 he set up for lawyer and editor of a newspaper. On the solicitation of Sir Walter Scott, for whom he published the first volume of the Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border in 1802, he removed his printing business to Edinburgh. In 1809 the firm of John Ballantyne & Co. was organized, with Scott and James and John Ballantyne for partners. Scott's connection with a concern, which speedily attained an unexampled celebrity, was unsuspected till the failure of the house in 1825, and then it excited surprise as much as regret. James Ballantyne, a kind-hearted and talented man, a good critic, and a friend highly esteemed by Scott, died in 1833.—J. S., G.  BALLANTYNE, John, younger brother of the preceding, was born at Kelso in 1774. In early life he was partner with his father, who carried on a small business as, a general dealer in Kelso, and this business he afterwards prosecuted on his own account till 1805, when he became clerk in his brother's printing establishment in Edinburgh. In 1809 his name appeared as the representative of a firm organized by his brother James and Sir Walter Scott, in opposition to that of Constable & Co.; and from this concern, besides the profits of his quarter of a share (Scott held one half share and the two Ballantynes the other), he derived £300 a year as manager. In 1813, when the firm of John Ballantyne & Co. found itself in difficulties, which were only got over by the help of the firm in opposition to which it was established, the nominal head of the concern became an auctioneer of books and curiosities in Edinburgh. Scott afterwards wrote for him the Lives of the Novelists. His aptitude for business has been seriously questioned, but in the jovial literary and artistic society which he frequented, his racy humour and endless stories never failed to be appreciated. He died at Edinburgh in 1821. John Ballantyne is the author of a novel entitled "The Widow's Lodgings."—J. S., G.  BALLANTYNE,, was born at Piteddie, parish of Kinghorn, Fifeshire, May 8, 1778, and received his early education in the village school of Lochgelly. He matriculated in the university of Edinburgh in 1795. His parents belonged to the church of Scotland, but he joined from conscientious motives the Burgher branch of the Secession church, and attended the theological hall of that body. After being licensed to preach the gospel, he taught schools at Lochgelly and at Colinsburgh. In 1805 he was settled as minister at Stonehaven in Kincardineshire. His first work, entitled "A Comparison of Established and Dissenting Churches," appeared in 1824, and a new and enlarged edition in 1830. His "Examination of the Human Mind," was published in 1828. The author received from a wealthy friend, who had been permitted to peruse the work in MS., £200, to bear any loss in the publication, or to be otherwise devoted to schemes of Christian benevolence. In this work he purposes to give a view of the general principles of the mind of man, accompanied with a brief illustration of their nature, mutual relations, and more important tendencies. He treats of the sensitive principle, the associative principle, the voluntary principle, and the motive principle. The work is characterized by much independence of thought, and contains some original views on the subject of the association of ideas and the nature of the will. Though a decided advance in several respects on the systems of Dr. Brown and Professor James Mylne, who at that time guided the metaphysics of Scotland, it is still very defective in the view given of necessary truth and of the moral power in man. He intended to apply the doctrines he promulgated to the more interesting phenomena of human nature, and is said to have left a considerable body of MSS. He died at Stonehaven in 1830, and was buried in the parish church of Feteresso, where a marble monument is erected to his memory.—J. M'C.  BALLARD,, born at Campden, Gloucestershire, early in the eighteenth century. He struggled through many difficulties in pursuit of his favourite studies of historical, philological, and biographical antiquities, and left in the Bodleian library at Oxford, a collection of papers still valuable to writers on Saxon and other antiquarian literature. His only published work was "Memoirs of British Ladies who have been celebrated for their Writings," 1752. It began with Juliana, an anchorite in the reign of Edward III., and ends with Constantia Grierson, who died in 1733. Ballard died in 1755.—J. B.  BALLARD, a French family, who during upwards of two centuries enjoyed exclusively the privilege of printing music in France. Their names are:—, who flourished under Henry II. and Charles IX.—, who published in the reigns of Henry III. and Henry IV. 150 psalms of David, with music—, syndic of the corporation of booksellers in the reign of Louis XIII.— and, who held in succession a patent from Louis XIV.—, who died in 1750.—, who was the last to hold a privilege which his family had uniformly abused to the discountenancing of all improvements in their art.—J. S., G.  BALLARDI,, a physician and botanist, was born at Cigliano in 1741, and died at Turin in 1828. He prosecuted his studies at Turin, and assisted Allioni in the preparation of his Flora Pedemontana. He superintended and arranged the botanic garden. His botanical works are a "Supplement to the Flora of Piedmont;" and a "Dissertation on the species of Cassia which may be substituted for Senna, and on the cultivated Rhubarb."—J. H. B. <section end="394H" /> <section begin="394I" />BALLARINI,, abbot of St. Michael de Murano at Venice, and afterwards general of the order of Calmadules, died in 1558. He wrote "Tractatus de Diligendis Inimicis." <section end="394I" /> <section begin="394J" />BALLE,, a Danish theologian, born in 1744, died in 1816. He wrote "Oratio de Dignitate verbi divini per Lutherum Restituta." <section end="394J" /> <section begin="394Knop" />BALLENSTEDT,, a geologist and pastor of Pabstorff in Prussia, was born at Schöningen in 1756. In 1819, he commenced the publication of a geological magazine at Quedlingberg, under the title of "Archiv für die neuesten Entdeckungen aus der Unwelt," of which five volumes appeared; several memoirs by Ballenstedt himself are to be found in its pages, and he also published a separate work, "Die Urwelt, oder Beweis von dem Daseyn und Untergange von mehr als einer Vorwelt," which met with a very favourable reception in Germany, and reached a third edition.—W. S. D. <section end="394Knop" />