BOIELDIEU, ADRIEN FRANCOIS, a distinguished French musical composer of operas; author of the “Calife de Bagdad,” “Telemaque,” and “La Dame Blanche,” reckoned his masterpiece; called the French Mozart (1775-1834).

BOIGNE, COUNT DE, a French soldier of fortune, born at Chambery; served under France, Russia, East India Company, and the prince of the Mahrattas, to whom he rendered 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, and cereals are grown; silk, cotton-thread, jewellery, cutlery, and firearms are manufactured.  The people are of Turk and Persian origin.  The capital, Bokhara (70), is on the plain of the Zarafshan, a walled, mud-built city, 8 or 9 m. in circumference, with numerous colleges and mosques, the centre of learning and religious life in Central Asia.  It has important trade and large slave markets.