ied acquaintance with dramatic and
literary society, and his experience, combined with his own pushing
character and acute intellect, helped to obtain for him very soon a large
practice, particularly in criminal cases. He became known as a formidable
cross-examiner, his great rival being Serjeant Parry (1816-1880). The three
great cases of his career were his successful prosecution of the murderer
Franz Mueller in 1864, his skilful defence of the Tichborne claimant in
1871 and his defence of the gaekwar of Baroda in 1875, his fee in this last
case being one of the largest ever known. Ballantine became a
serjeant-at-law in 1856. He died at Margate on the 9th of January 1887,
having previously published more than one volume of reminiscences. Serjeant
Ballantine's private life was decidedly Bohemian; and though he earned
large sums, he died very poor.

BALLANTYNE, ROBERT MICHAEL (1825-1894), Scottish writer of fiction, was
born at Edinburgh on the 24th of April 1825, and came of the same family as
the famous printers and publishers. When sixteen years of age he went to
Canada and was for six years in the service of the Hudson's Bay Company. He
returned to Scotland in 1847, and next year published his first book,
_Hudson's Bay: or, Life in the Wilds of North America_. For some time he
was employed by Messrs Constable, the publishers, but in 1856 he gave up
business for the profession of literature, and began the series of
excellent stories of adventure for the young with which his name is
popularly associated. _The Young Fur-Traders_ (1856), _The Coral Island_
(1857), _The World of Ice_ (1859), _Ungava: a Tale of Eskimo Land_ (1857),
_The Dog Crusoe_ (1860), _The Lighthouse_ (1865), _Deep Down_ (1868), _The
Pirate City_ (1874), _Erling the Bold_ (1869), _The Settler and the Savage_
(1877), and other books, to the number of upwards of a hundred, followed in
regular succession, his rule being in every case to write as far as
possible from personal knowledge of the scenes he described. His stories
had the merit of being thoroughly healthy in tone and possessed
considerable graphic force. Ballantyne was also no mean artist, and
exhibited some of his water-colours at the Royal Scottish Academy. He lived
in later years at Harrow, and died on the 8th of February 1894, at Rome,
where he had gone to attempt to shake off the results of overwork. He wrote
a volume of _Personal Reminiscences of Book-making_ (1893).

BALLARAT [BALLAARAT