BOLAN` PASS, a high-lying, deep, narrow gorge, extending between Quetta (Beluchistan) and Kandahar (Afghanistan), sloping upwards at an inclination of 90 ft. a mile; is traversed by a torrent.

BOLESLAUS, the name of several dukes of Poland, of whom the most famous is Boleslaus I. the Great, who ruled from 992 to 1025.

BOLEYN, ANNE, or BULLEN, second wife of Henry VIII. and mother of Elizabeth, daughter of Sir Thoman Bullen (afterwards Earl of Wiltshire); after a three years’ residence at the French Court became maid of honour to Queen Katherine; attracted the admiration of Henry; was married to him, and became queen; charged with adultery and conspiracy, was found guilty and beheaded; was of the Reformed faith; her marriage with Henry had important bearings on the English Reformation (1507-1536).

BOLINGBROKE, HENRY ST. JOHN, VISCOUNT, English statesman, orator, and political writer, born at Battersea; Prime Minister of Queen Anne in the Tory interest, after her dismissal of the Whigs; on the accession of George I. fled to France and joined the Pretender; was impeached and attainted; returned in 1723 to his estates, but denied a seat in the House of Lords, an indignity which he resented by working the overthrow of Walpole; was the friend of Pope and Swift, and the author of “Letters” bearing upon politics and literature.  “Bolingbroke,” says Prof.  Saintsbury, “is a rhetorician pure and simple, but the subjects of his rhetoric were not the great and perennial subjects, but puny ephemeral forms of them—­the partisan and personal politics of his day, the singularly shallow form of infidelity called Deism and the like; and his time deprived him of many, if not most, of the rhetorician’s most telling weapons.  The ‘Letter to Windham,’ a sort of apologia, and the ’Ideal of a Patriot King,’ exhibit him at his best.”  It was he who suggested to Pope his “Essay on Man” (1678-1751).

BOLIVAR, SIMON, surnamed the Liberator, general and statesman, born at Caracas; a man of good birth and liberal education; seized with the passion for freedom during a visit to Madrid and Paris, devoted himself to the cause of S. American independence; freed from the yoke of Spain Venezuela and New Grenada, which, in 1819, he erected into a republic under the name of Colombia; achieved in 1824 the same for Upper Peru, henceforth called Bolivia, after his name; accused of aspiring to the Dictatorship, he abdicated, and was preparing to leave the country when he died of fever, with the sage reflection on his lips, “The presence of a soldier, however disinterested he may be, is always dangerous in a State that is new to freedom”; he has been called the Washington of S. America (1783-1830).