and enclosed with a balustrade. Sometimes balconies are adapted
for ceremonial purposes, _e.g._ that of St Peter's at Rome, whence the
newly elected pope gives his blessing _urbi et orbi_. Inside churches
balconies are sometimes provided for the singers, and in banqueting halls
and the like for the musicians. In theatres the "balcony" was formerly a
stage-box, but the name is now usually confined to the part of the
auditorium above the dress circle and below the gallery.

BALDE, JAKOB (1604-1668), German Latinist, was born at Ensisheim in Alsace
on the 4th of January 1604. Driven from Alsace by the marauding bands of
Count Mansfeld, he fled to Ingolstadt where he began to study law. A love
disappointment, however, turned his thoughts to the church, and in 1624 he
entered the Society of Jesus. Continuing his study of the humanities, he
became in 1628 professor of rhetoric at Innsbruck, and in 1635 at
Ingolstadt, whither he had been transferred by his superiors in order to
study theology. In 1633 he was ordained priest. His lectures and poems had
now made him famous, and he was summoned to Munich where, in 1638, he
became court chaplain to the elector Maximilian I. He remained in Munich
till 1650, when he went to live at Landshut and afterwards at Amberg. In
1654 he was transferred to Neuberg on the Danube, as court preacher and
confessor to the count palatine. In the opinion of his contemporaries,
Balde revived the glories of the Augustan age, and Pope Alexander VII. and
the scholars of the Netherlands combined to do him honour; even Herder
regarded him as a greater poet than Horace. While such judgments are
naturally exaggerated, there is no doubt that he takes a very high place
among modern Latin poets. He died at Neuberg on the 9th of August 1668.

A collected edition of Balde's works in 4 vols. was published at Cologne in
1650; a more complete edition in 8 vols. at Munich, 1729; also a good
selection by L. Spach (Paris and Strassburg, 1871). An edition of his Latin
lyrics appeared at Regensburg in 1884. There are translations into German
of his finer odes, by J. Schrott and M. Schleich (Munich, 1870). See G.
Westermayer, _Jacobus Balde, sein Leben und seine Werke_ (1868); J. Bach,
_Jakob Balde_ (Freiburg, 1904).

BALDER, a Scandinavian god, the son of Odin or Othin. The story of his
death is given in two widely different forms, by Saxo in his _Gesta
Danorum_ (ed. Holder, pp. 69 ff.) and in the prose Edda (_Gylfaginn