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bing and secret hatred for a while, and at gth captivity and utter wreck to our queen from England." He added, that the kingdom of Eugland at length shall fall, of right, to the crown of Scotland; but it will cost many bloody battles; and the Spaniards shall be hdpers, and take a part to themselves for their labour." Sir James Melvil is an author of credit; therefore it is probable that our Elger ventured to utter his prediction: but, as it proved true only in part, either he misunderstood the stars, or they deceived the astrologer-His works are, 1. Astronomia Jacobi Bassantini Scoti, opus a solutissimum, &c. ter ed tum Latine et Gallice. Genev. 1599, fol. This is the title given it by Tornæsius, who translated it into Latin from the French, in auch language it was first published. 2. Paaparase de l'Astrolabe, avec un Amplification de Usage de l'Astrolabe. Lyons, 1555. Pars, 1017, 8vo. 3. Mathematic. Genethliaca. 4. Arithmetica. 5. Musica secundum Platonem. 6. De Mathesi in genere.

BASSANUS, in ornithology. See PELI

CANUS.

BASSE, in ichthyology. See PERCA. BASSE, or LA BASS, a town of France in the department of the north, and late province of Flanders. Lat. 50. 28 N. Lon. 2. 52 E. BASSE-COUR, in building, a court separated from the principal one, and destined for the stables, coach-houses, &c.

BASSENTHWAITE WATER, a fine bke in Cumberland, 3 miles N.W. of Keswick. It is four miles long, bounded on one se by high hills, wooded, in many places, to thair bases; on the other by the fields, and the rts of Skiddaw.

BASSET, or BASETTE, a game played with cards, said to have been invented by a le Venetian, for which he was banished. 1: was first introduced into France by signior Jesuniani, ambassador of Venice, in 1674. Sere laws were made against it by Louis XIV., to elude which they disguised basset under the name of pour et contre, that is, *for and against," which occasioned new arres and prohibitions of parliament. The pardes concerned in it are, a dealer or banker; bis assistant, who supervises the losing cards; and the punter, or any one who plays against She person who holds the bank.

There are other terms besides these used in the game; which it does not seem necessary to explain here. This game has been the object of mathematical calculations. (See De Moivre oa Chances.)

BASSETERRE, the capital of St. Christopher, a fine town, built by the French when part of the island was in their possession, before it was ceded to the English in 1713. Tae houses are of brick, freestone, and timber, and among other buildings are a town se, a hospital, and a large church. BASSETERRE, the principal town of GuaCoupe, in a district of the same name, in the W part of the island. It is defended by a cindel and other fortifications.

BASSETING, in the coal mines, denotes

the rising of a vein of coal towards the surface of the earth, till it come within two or three feet of the surface itself. This is also called by the workmen croping; and stands opposed to dipping, which is the descent of the vein to such a depth, that it is rarely, if ever, followed to the end.

BASSIA. In botany, a genus of the class dodecandria, order monogynia. Calyx fourleaved; corol eight-cleft; with an inflated tube; stamens sixteen; drupe five-seeded. Two species, one a native of Malabar, the other of the island Tanna.

BASSO CONTINUO, in music, originally meant the accompaniment to the higher parts of a sonata, concerto, or chorus, which served as a bass when the real bass was silent, as in fugues, and some other movements. The word is now used in much the same sense as thorough-bass.

BASSO CONTANTE, the vocal bass part, or the bass singer in a concert or an oratorio.

a

BASSO RELIEVO, or BASS-RELIEF; piece of sculpture, where the figures or images do not project or stand out, far above the plane on which they are formed. Whatever figures or representations are thus cut, stamped, or otherwise wrought, so that not the entire body, but only part of it, is raised above the plane, are said to be done in relief, or relievo; and when that work is low, flat, and but little raised, it is called low relief. When a piece of sculpture, a coin, or a medal, has its figure raised so as to be well distinguished, it is called bold, and we say its relief is strong. For a fine modern specimen, that on the Monument, Fish-street Hill, London, cannot but be mentioned.

The origin of basso-relievo is said to have been described in the story of the maid of Corinth, related by Pliny, who says that the Sicyonian potter, her father, invented the following method of taking likenesses. His daughter being in love with a youth going to a foreign country, she circumscribed the shadow of his face with lines on the wall by lamp-light. Her father took the impression in clay, and baked it among his vases.

But the authors of the French Encyclopedie remark, that the origin of basso-relievo is confounded with that of the hieroglyphic, that is to say, it owes its birth to figured writing; and under this point of view it is common to all people, being found even among the most savage.

Some very fine antique basso-relievos enrich the English collections: e. g. The tombstone of Xanthippus father of Pericles, and a man curbing a horse, both about the time of Phidias, are in the collection of the late Charles Townley, esq.; now in the new wing of the British Museum, to which the whole of Mr. Townley's collection has been transferred.The marquis of Lansdown has a Greek bassrelief of Chaleas, as large as life.-At Wilton House there is a fine example of the death of Meleager, and a small but curious Hercules and Agle, a bass-relief composed of mosaic, in natural colours, which is supposed to be the

only one of the kind now extant.-John Hawkins, esq. the Grecian traveller, possesses a beautiful small bronze bass-relief of Paris, Helen, and two genii, which he brought with him from Greece.

BASSOON, a musical instrument of the wind sort, blown with a reed, furnished with eleven holes, and used as a bass in a concert of hautboys, flutes, &c. To render this instruinent more portable, it is divided into two parts, whence it is also called fagot. Its diameter at bottom is nine inches, and its holes are stopped like those of a large flute. The compass of the bassoon comprehends three octaves, extending from double B flat, to B above the treble-cliff note. The scale includes every semitone between its extremes, and its tone is so assimilated to that of the hautboy, as to render it the most proper bass to that instrument whence, indeed, it derives its name bas son, low sound, in contradistinction to hautbois.

BASSORA, or BASRAH, a large city and seaport of Turkey in Asia, in Irac Arabia. It contains upwards of 50,000 inhabitants, and is surrounded by a wall of clay, said to be 12 miles in circuit. According to the abbé Raynal, the merchandise annually brought to Bassora is equal in value to 525,000l. of which the English furnish 175,000l. the Dutch 87,000l., and the Moors, Banians, Armenians, and Arabs, furnish the remainder. The cargoes of these nations," says he, "consist of rice; sugar; plain, striped, and flowered muslins from Bengal; spices from Ceylon and the Molucca islands; coarse white and blue cottons from Coromandel; cardamom, pepper, sandars-wood from Malabar; gold and silver stuffs, turbans, shawls, indigo, from Surat; pearls from Baharen, and coffee from Mocha; &c." Lat. 29. 45 N. Lon. 47. 40 E.

BASSOVIA. In botany, a genus of the class pentandria, order monogynia. Calyx five-parted; corol wheel-shaped; berry manyseeded, nodalous; seeds imbedded in pulp, surrounded with a membranaceous margin. One species only, a native of Guiana, with herbaceous stem, and small green flowers.

BASTAGARII, in ecclesiastical history, those who carry the images of saints at proces

sions.

BA'STARD. a. 1. Begotten out of wedlock; illegitimate (Shaks.). 2. Spurious; supposititious; adulterate (Temple).

BASTARD, a natural child, or one begotten and born out of lawful wedlock. Blackstone says, The civil and canon laws do not allow a child to remain a bastard if the parents afterwds intermarry; and herein they differ most materially from our law; which, though not so strict as to require that the child shall be begotten, yet makes it an indispensable condition that it shall be born after lawful wedlock. And the reason of our law is surely much superior to that of the Roman, if we consider the principal end and design of establishing the contract of marriage, taken in a vil light; abstractedly from any religious which has nothing to do with the legiti

macy or illegitimacy of the children. The main end and design of marriage, therefore, being to ascertain and fix upon some certain person, to whom the care, the protection, the maintenance, and the education of the children, should belong; this end is undoubtedly better answered by legitimating all issue born after wedlock, than by legitimating all issue of the same parties, even born before wedlock, so as wedlock afterwards ensues: 1. Because of the very great uncertainty there will generally be, in the proof that the issue was really begotten by the same man; whereas, by confining the proof to the birth, and not to the begetting, our law has rendered it perfectly certain what child is legitimate, and who is to take care of the child. 2. Because by the Roman law a child may be continued a bastard, or made legitimate, at the option of the father and mother, by a marriage ex post facto; thereby opening a door to many frauds and partialities, which by our law are prevented. 3. Because by those laws a man may remain a bastard till forty years of age, and then become legitimate by the subsequent marriage of his parents; whereby the main end of marriage, the protection of infants, is totally frustrated. 4. Because this rule of the Roman law admits of no limitation as to the time, or number of bastards to be so legitimated; but a dozen of them may, twenty years after their birth, by the subsequent marriage of their parents, be admitted to all the privileges of legitimate children. This is plainly a great discourage. ment to the matrimonial state; to which one main inducement is usually not only the desire of having children, but also the desire of procreating lawful heirs. Whereas our constitution guards against this indecency, and at the same time gives sufficient allowance to the frailties of human nature. For if a child be begotten while the parents are single, and they will endeavour to make an early reparation for the offence, by marrying within a few months after, our law is so indulgent as not to bastardize the child, if it be born, though not begotten, in lawful wedlock; for this is an incident that can happen but once; since all future children will be begotten, as well as born, within the rules of honour and civil society.

From what has been said, it appears that all children born before matrimony are bastard by our law: and so it is of all children born so long after the death of the husband, that, by the usual course of gestation, they could not be begotten by him. But this being a matter of some uncertainty, the law is not exact as to a few days. But if a man dies, and his widow soon after marries again, and a child is born within such a time as that by the course of nature it might have been the child of either husband: in this case, he is said to be more than ordinarily legitimate; for he may, when he arrives to years of discretion, choose which of the fathers he pleases. To prevent this, among other inconveniences, the civil law ordained that no widow shall marry infra annum luctus; a rule which obtained so early

the reign of Augustus, if not of Romulus: and the same constitution was probably handed down to our early ancestors from the Romans, during their stay in this island; for we find it established under the Saxon and Danish governments.

As bastards may be born before the coverture or marriage-state is begun, or after it is determined, so also children born during wedlock may in some circumstances be bastards. As if the husband be out of the kingdom of England (or as the law loosely phrases it, extra çuatuor maria) for above nine months, so that po access to his wife can be presumed, her Issue during that period shall be bastards. But generally during the coverture, access of the husband shall be presumed, unless the contrary shall be shown; which is such a negative as can only be proved by showing him to be elsewhere; for the general rule is, præsumitur pro legimatione. In a divorce a mensa et thoro, if the wife breeds children, they are bastards; for the law will presume the husband and wife conformable to the sentence of separation, unless access be proved: but in a voluntary seperation by agreement, the law will suppose access, unless the negative be shown. So also, if there is an apparent impossibility of procreation on the part of the husband, as if he be only eight years old, or the like, there the issue of the wife shall be bastard. Likewise, in case of divorce in the spiritual court a rin culo matrimonii, all the issue born during the Coverture are bastards; because such divorce is always upon some cause that rendered the marriage unlawful and null from the beginning.

As to the rights and incapacities which appertain to a bastard, the former are very few, being only such as he can acquire; for he can hent nothing, being looked upon as the son of nobody, and sometimes called filius nullius, sometimes filius populi. Yet he may gain a name by reputation, though he has none by inheritance. All other children have their primary settlement in their father's parish; but a bastard in the parish where born, for he hath no father. However, in case of fraud, as if a woman either be sent by order of justices, or comes to beg as a vagrant, to a parish which she does not belong to, and drops her bastard there, the bastard shall, in the first case, be setled in the parish from whence she was illegally removed; or, in the latter case, in the mother's own parish, if the mother be apprehended for her vagrancy. Bastards also, born in any licensed hospital for pregnant women, are sealed in the parishes to which the mothers belong. The incapacity of a bastard consists principally in this, that he cannot be heir to any one; for being nullius filius, he is therefore of kin to nobody, and has no ancestor from whom any inheritable blood can be derived: therefore, if there be no other claimant upon an inheritance than such illegitimate child, it shall escheat to the lord. And as bastards cannot be heirs themselves, so neither can they have any heirs but those of their own bodies. For as all collateral kindred consists in being

derived from the same common ancestor, and as a bastard has no legal ancestors, he can have no collateral kindred; and consequently can have no legal heirs, but such as claim by a lineal descent from himself. And therefore, if a bastard purchases land, and dies seised thereof without issue, and intestate, the land shall escheat to the lord of the fee. A bastard was also, in strictness, incapable of holy orders; and though that were dispensed with, yet he was utterly disqualified from holding any dignity in the church: but this doctrine seems now obsolete; and in all other respects, there is no distinction between a bastard and another man. And really any other distinction than that of not inheriting, which civil policy renders necessary, would, with regard to the innocent offspring of his parents' crimes, be odious, unjust, and cruel to the last degree; and yet the civil law, so boasted of for its equitable decisions, made bastards in some cases incapable even of a gift from their parents. A bastard may, lastly, be made legitimate, and capable of inheriting, by the transcendant power of an act of parliament, and not otherwise: as was done in the case of John of Gaunt's bastard children, by a statute of Richard II.

BASTARD, in respect of artillery, is applied to those pieces which are of an unusual or illegitimate make or proportion. These are of two kinds, long and short, according as the defect is on the redundant or defective side. The long bastards, again, are either common or uncommon. To the common kind belong the double culverin extraordinary, half culverin extraordinary, quarter culverin extraordinary, falcon extraordinary, &c. The ordinary bastard-culverin carries a ball of eight pounds.

BASTARD PLEURISY. Rheumatism of the muscles of the side.

BASTARD, in botany. As bastard alkanet, see LITHOSPERMUM; bastard balm, see MELITTIS; cabbage-tree, see GEOFFROYA; hemp, see DATISCA, &c.

To BA'STARD. v. a. To convict of being a bastard (Bacon).

To BASTARDIZE. v. a. (from bastard.) 1. To convict of being a bastard. 2. To beget a bastard (Shaks.);

BASTARDLY. ad. (from bastard.) In the manner of a bastard; spuriously (Donne).

BASTARDY. 3. (from bastard.) An unlawful state of birth, which disables the bastard from succeeding to an inheritance (Taylor).

BASTARDY (General), is a certificate from the bishop of the diocese to the king's justices, after enquiry made whether the party is a bastard or not, upon some question of inheritance.

BASTARDY (Special), is a suit commenced in the king's courts against a person that calls another a bastard.

BASTARNÆ, or BASTERNÆ, a people of German original, manners, and language; who extended themselves a great way to the east of the Vistula, the east boundary of Germany, among the Sarmate, as far as the mouth of the

Ister and the Euxine; and were divided into several nations.

BASTARNICE ALPS, now the Carpathian Mountains.

To BASTE. v. a. (lastonner, French.) 1. To beat with a stick (Hudibras). 2. To drip butter upon incat on the spit (Shakspeare). 3. [baster, Fr.] To sew slightly.

BASTERNA, a kind of chariot, borne or drawn by beasts, used by the Roman ladies. BASTIA, a scaport town of Albania, in European Turkey. Lat. 39. 40 N. Lon. 20.

20 E.

BASTIA, the capital of the island of Corsica, in the Mediterranean. It has a good harbour, a strong castle, and is a bishop's see. It was taken by the English, and given to the Corsicans, in 1745, but was afterwards retaken by the Genoese. In 1794 the English, under load Hood, got possession of it, after a long

siege.

Lat. 42. 36 N. Lon. 9. 30 E. BASTILE, denotes a small antique castle, fortified with turrets. Such was the Bastile of Paris, which was the only castle that had retained the name. It was begun to be built in 1369 by order of Charles V., and was finished in 1383 under the reign of his successor. Its chief use was for the custody of state prisoners, who were frequently treated therein with unmitigated cruelty and oppression. It was destroyed at an early period of the French revolution.

Our deservedly celebrated poet Cowper exhibits the true British feeling when speaking of the Bastile in the following lines:

"Ye horrid tow'rs, th' abode of broken

free!" Unhappily, however, our Gallic neighbours are as far from the enjoyment of genuine freedom as ever they were.

BASTIMENTOS, small islands near Terra Firma, in South America, at the mouth of the bay of Nombre de Dios.

BASTINADO. See BASTONADO.

To BASTINA'DE. TO BASTINA'DO. v. a. (from the noun; bastonner, Fr.) To beat; to treat with the bastinado (Arbuthnot).

BASTION, in the modern fortification, a large mass of earth at the angles of a work, connecting the curtains to each other; and answering to the bulwark of the ancients. It is formed by two faces, two flanks, and two demigorges. The two faces form the saliant angle, or angle of the bastion; the two flanks form with the faces, the epaules or shoulders; and the union of the other two ends of the flanks with the curtains forms the two angles of the flanks. See LFAGH, fig. 2. pl. 13.

Bastions, some say, were first introduced by Zisca the Bohemian; others attribute the invention of them to Achinet Bashaw, in the

year 1480, mentioning the fortification of Otranto, as the first instance in which they were used. However, they were well known soon after the year 1500; for Tartalea gives a plan of Turin, which had been completely fortified for some time with four bastions, in his Quesivi et Inventioni diverse, published in 1546. The first bastions, such as those of Turin and of Antwerp, which was fortified about the year 1540, were small, and removed at a great distance from each other: but they were made much larger, and brought nearer to each other in the citadel of Antwerp, erected under the direction of the duke d'Alva, about the year 1566.

If the angle of the bastion be less than sixty degrees, it will be too small to give room for guns; and besides, so acute as to be easily beaten down by the enemies' guns: to which may be added, "that it will either render the line of defence too long, or the flanks too short: it must therefore be more than sixty degrees; but whether or no it should be a right angle, some intermediate angle between sixty and ninety, or even whether or no it should exceed a right angle is still disputed; though those are generally preferred which are not much less than ninety degrees, and not exceeding 120 or 130o. Hence it follows, that a triangle can never be fortified, in regard either some or all of the angles will be either sixty degrees, or less than sixty.

Bastions are of divers kinds, solid, void, flat, cut, &c.

Solid Bastions, are those that are entirely filled up with earth to the height of the rampart, without any void space towards the

centre.

Foid or Hollow Bastion, has the rampart and parapet ranging only round the flanks and spaces, so that a void space is left within towards the centre, where the ground is so low, that if the rampart be taken no retrenchment can be made in the centre but what will lie under the fire of the besieged.

Regular Bastion, is that which has its due proportion of faces, flanks, and gorges.

Deformed or irregular Bastion, is when the irregularity of the lines and angles throws the bastion out of shape: as when it wants one of the demigorges, one side of the interior polygon being too short, &c.

Demi Bastion, or Half Bastion, also otherwise called an Epaulinent, has but one face

and flank.

Doulle Bastion, is when one bastion is raised within, and upon the plane of another bastion.

Flat Bastion, is one built in the middle of the curtain, when it is too long to be defended by the usual bastions at the extremities.

Composed Bastion, is when the two sides of the interior polygon are very unequal, which makes the gorges also unequal.

Cut Bastion, is that which has a re-entering angle at the point, and is sometimes called a bastian with a tenaille, whose point is cut off, making an angle inwards, and two points outwards. This is used when the saliant angle