signal service; amassed wealth, which he
dealt out generously and for the benefit of his country (1751-1830).

BOII, an ancient people of Gaul, occupying territory between the
Allier and the Loire.

BOILEAU, NICOLAS (surnamed Despreaux, to distinguish him from his
brother), poet and critic, born in Paris; brought up to the law, but
devoted to letters, associating himself with La Fontaine, Racine, and
Moliere; author of "Satires" and "Epistles," "L'Art Poetique," "Le
Lutrin," &c., in which he attached and employed his wit against the bad
taste of his time; did much to reform French poetry, as Pascal did to
reform the prose, and was for long the law-giver of Parnassus; was an
imitator of Pope, but especially of Horace (1636-1711).

BOISARD, a French fabulist of remarkable fecundity (1743-1831).

BOIS-GUILLEBERT, a French economist, cousin of Vauban; advocate of
free trade; _d_. 1714.

BOIS-LE-DUC (27), capital of North Brabant, 45 m. SE. of Amsterdam,
and with a fine cathedral; seat of an archbishop.

BOISMONT, THE ABBE, one of the best French pulpit orators of the
18th century (1715-1786).

BOISROBERT, THE ABBE, a French poet, one of the first members of the
French Academy; patronised by Richelieu (1592-1662).

BOISSONADE, JEAN FRANCOIS, a French Greek scholar; for a time
carried away by the revolutionary movement, but abandoned politics for
letters (1774-1857).

BOISSIERE, a French lexicographer (1806-1885).

BOISSY D'ANGLAS, COUNT, a member and president of the Convention in
Paris, noted for his firmness and coolness during the frenzy of the
Revolution: one day the Parisian mob burst in upon the Convention, shot
dead a young deputy, Feraud, "sweeping the members of it before them to
the upper-bench ... covered, the president sat unyielding, like a rock in
the beating of seas; they menaced him, levelled muskets at him, he
yielded not; they held up Feraud's bloody head to him; with grave, stern
air he bowed to it, and yielded not"; became a senator and commander of
the Legion of Honour under Napoleon; was made a peer by Louis XVIII.
(1756-1826).

BOISTE, a French lexicographer (1765-1824).

BOKHA`RA (1,800), a Mohammedan State in Central Asia, N. of
Afghanistan, nominally independent; but the Khan is a vassal of the Czar.
The surface is arid, and cultivation possible only near the rivers-the
Oxus, Zarafshan, and Karshi. In the sands of the Oxus, gold and salt are
found. Rice, cotton