became (1888) a member of the National Academy of Design in
New York. For some years a genre painter, he later turned to decorative
work, marked by rare delicacy and beauty of colouring. He painted mural
decorations for a dome in the manufacturers' building at the Chicago
Exposition of 1893; for the dome of the Congressional library,
Washington; for the capitol at St Paul, Minnesota; for the Baltimore
court-house; in New York City for the Appellate court house, the grand
ball-room of the Waldorf-Astoria hotel, the Lawyers' club, and the
residences of W.K. Vanderbilt and Collis P. Huntington; and in
Philadelphia for the residence of George W. Drexel. With his wife he
wrote _Italian Cities_ (1900) and edited Vasari's _Lives of the
Painters_ (1896), and was well known as a lecturer and writer on art. He
became president of the Society of Mural Painters, and of the Society of
American Artists.

BLASIUS (or BLAISE), SAINT, bishop of Sebaste or Sivas in Asia Minor,
martyred under Diocletian on the 3rd of February 316. The Roman Catholic
Church holds his festival on the 3rd of February, the Orthodox Eastern
Church on the 11th. His flesh is said to have been torn with
woolcombers' irons before he was beheaded, and this seems to be the only
reason why he has always been regarded as the patron saint of
woolcombers. In pre-Reformation England St Blaise was a very popular
saint, and the council of Oxford in 1222 forbade all work on his
festival. Owing to a miracle which he is alleged to have worked on a
child suffering from a throat affection, who was brought to him on his
way to execution, St Blaise's aid has always been held potent in throat
and lung diseases. The woolcombers of England still celebrate St
Blaise's day with a procession and general festivities. He forms one of
a group of fourteen (i.e. twice seven) saints, who for their help in
time of need have been associated as objects of particularly devoted
worship in Roman Catholic Germany since the middle of the 15th century.

See William Hone, _Every Day Book_, i. 210.

BLASPHEMY (through the Fr. from Gr. [Greek: blasphaemia], profane
language, slander, probably derived from root of [Greek: blaptein], to
injure, and [Greek: phaemae], speech), literally, defamation or evil
speaking, but more peculiarly restricted to an indignity offered to the
Deity by words or writing. By the Mosaic law death by stoning was the
punishment for blasphemy (Lev. xxiv. 16). The