Page:The New International Encyclopædia 1st ed. v. 20.djvu/16

VAN BEMMEL. contributions to periodicals, Van Bemmel published: Voyage à travers champs: la province de Luxembourg (1849): L'harmonie des passions humaines (1854); La Belgique illustrée (1855); Etude sur les monuments druidiques (1857); Histoire de Saint Josse-ten-Noode (1869); L'Ourthe et l'Amblève pittoresques (1873); Patria Belgica (1871-75); Don Placide: mémoires du dernier moine de l'Abbaye de Villers (1876), a novel; Histoire de Belgique empruntée textuellement aux récits des écrivains contemporains (1880). He died in Brussels.  VAN BENEDEN,,. A Belgian zoölogist. See.  VANBRUGH, vän'brōō. Sir (1664–1726). An eminent English architect and dramatist. He was born in London, the grandson of a Protestant refugee from Flanders, said to have settled in England in the time of Queen Elizabeth. John Vanbrugh at about nineteen went to France, presumably to study architecture, but he returned to England some two years later and got a commission in the army, in which he presently became a captain. In 1690 he was again in France, and was arrested on suspicion of being a spy, at length being made a prisoner in the Bastille. He was released late in 1692 and returned to England. His first play was The Relapse, or Virtue in Danger, a sequel to Colley Gibber's Love's Last Shift, from which Sir Novelty Fashion reappears in Vanbrugh's piece as the inimitable Lord Foppington. It was produced at Drury Lane about the end of 1690, and it at once established its author as one of the leading wits and dramatists of the day. In the following spring his comedy of The Provok'd Wife, brought out at the Lincoln's Inn Fields Theatre, met with an even better reception. The year 1698 is notable in dramatic history for the publication of Jeremy Collier's famous Short View of the Immorality and Profaneness of the English Stage. Vanbrugh was among those specially attacked, and he published in the same year a pamphlet in reply called A Short Vindication of The Relapse and The Provok'd Wife from Immorality and Profaneness. Of his other works, several of them more or less free adaptations from the French, the best is The Confederacy, a brilliant comedy, which was produced in 1705 at the new theatre that he built in the Haymarket for himself and Congreve.

Meanwhile, he had been making his way as an architect. In 1701 he began erecting for the Earl of Carlisle the palace of Castle Howard in Yorkshire. In 1702 he was appointed Comptroller of the Board of Works. His reputation was such that in 1705 he was engaged to erect Blenheim Palace, which Parliament had voted to the Duke of Marlborough: but the Duchess, after her husband's death, refused to pay Vanbrugh his salary and dismissed him from his office. After much trouble, he managed to get nearly all the money due. He was knighted in 1714, and died at Whitehall.

His comedies have not maintained their popularity, their licentious tone preventing their being read to the extent to which the keenness of their satire and the genuine character of their humor would otherwise entitle them. Lacking the polish of Congreve's style, they are at the same time free from the stiff artificiality that disfigures so much of his work.

At his death Vanbrugh left an unfinished comedy called The Journey to London, which Gibber completed and produced at Drury Lane in 1728 as The Provok'd Husband. Consult: W. C. Ward, Introduction to ed., Sir John Vanbrugh (London. 1898): Swain, Introduction to the Best Plays of Sir John Vanbrugh (ib., 1896); Leigh Hunt, The Dramatic Works of Wycherley, Congreve, Vanbrugh, and Farquhar, with Biographical and Critical Notes (new ed., ib., 1855); Hazlitt, Lectures on the English Comic Writers (ib., 1819); Dametz, John Vanbrughs Leben und Werke (Vienna, 1898).  VAN BRUNT, (1832-1903). An American architect, born in Boston, Mass. He graduated at Harvard in 1854, and during the Civil War served for two years as military secretary on the staff of the admiral commanding the North Atlantic Squadron. Among the more important buildings of which he was the architect are Memorial Hall at Harvard, the library building of the University of Michigan, the First Church in Boston, and the Electricity Building at the World's Columbian Exposition. Among his writings are Greek Lines and Other Architectural Essays (1893), and a translation of Viollet-le-Duc's Discourses on Architecture.  VAN BU'REN,, (1782-1862). Eighth President of the United States. He was born at Kinderhook, N. Y., December 5, 1782, studied law with William P. Van Ness in New York City, and was admitted to the bar in 1803. He early developed a fondness for politics and held successively the offices of Surrogate and State Senator, in the latter capacity being recognized as the leader of the Tompkins faction of the Republican Party. In 1815 he became Attorney-General of the State, a position from which he was removed in 1819 on account of his rupture with the administration of Governor DeWitt Clinton. In February, 1821, he was elected to the United States Senate, and in the same year served as a delegate in the State Constitutional Convention. In the Senate, to which he was reëlected in 1827, he served for a number of years as chairman of the Judiciary Committee, supported the tariff bills of 1824 and 1828, opposed internal improvements by the Federal Government, and became a strong advocate of (q.v.). He resigned from the Senate to accept the office of Governor of New York, to which he was elected in 1828. Van Buren was an enthusiastic supporter of General Jackson for the Presidency in 1828, and became Jackson's Secretary of State the following year, but resigned in 1831 to accept the post of Minister to England. The refusal of the Senate, for a trivial reason, to confirm his nomination after he had sailed only brought increased popularity to Van Buren, and with the support of Jackson easily secured his nomination and election to the Vice-Presidency in 1832. During all the vicissitudes of Jackson's administration Van Buren succeeded in retaining his confidence unimpaired, winning especial favor from the President because of his attitude in the Peggy O'Neill episode (see ), and soon came to be regarded as his logical successor. In 1835 he was nominated by the Democratic Party, and in the following year was elected President, receiving 170 electoral votes, as against 73 given to his principal opponent, the Whig candidate, General W. H. Harrison. Van Buren's term was made notable by a widespread financial panic 