BAILY, EDWARD HODGES (1788-1867), British sculptor, was born at Bristol on the 10th of March 1788. His father, who was a celebrated carver of figureheads for ships, destined him for a commercial life, but even at school the boy showed his natural taste and remarkable talents by producing numerous wax models and busts of his schoolfellows, and afterwards, when placed in a mercantile house, still carried on his favourite employment. Two Homeric studies, executed for a friend, were shown to J. Flaxman, who bestowed on them such high commendation that in 1807 Baily came to London and placed himself as a pupil under the great sculptor. In 1809 he entered the academy schools. In 1811 he gained the academy gold medal for a model of "Hercules restoring Alcestis to Admetus," and soon after exhibited "Apollo discharging his Arrows against the Greeks" and "Hercules casting Lichas into the Sea." In 1821 he was elected R.A., and exhibited one of his best pieces, "Eve at the Fountain." He was entrusted with the carving of the bas-reliefs on the south side of the Marble Arch in Hyde Park, and executed numerous busts and statues, such as those of Nelson in Trafalgar Square, of Earl Grey, of Lord Mansfield and others. Baily died at Holloway on the 22nd of May 1867.
BAILY, FRANCIS (1774-1844), English astronomer, was born at Newbury in Berkshire, on the 28th of April 1774. After a tour in the unsettled parts of North America in 1796-1797, his journal of which was edited by Augustus de Morgan in 1856, he entered the London Stock Exchange in 1799. The successive publication of Tables for the Purchasing and Renewing of Leases (1802), of The Doctrine of Interest and Annuities (1808), and The Doctrine of Life-Annuities and Assurances (1810), earned him a high reputation as a writer on life-contingencies; he amassed a fortune through diligence and integrity and retired from business in 1825, to devote himself wholly to astronomy. He had already, in 1820, taken a leading part in the foundation of the Royal Astronomical Society; and its gold medal was awarded him, in 1827, for his preparation of the Astronomical Society's Catalogue of 2881 stars (Memoirs R. Astr. Soc. ii.). The reform of the Nautical Almanac in 1829 was set on foot by his protests; he recommended to the British Association in 1837, and in great part executed, the reduction of Joseph de Lalande's and Nicolas de Lacaille's catalogues containing about 57,000 stars; he superintended the compilation of the British Association's Catalogue of 8377 stars (published 1845); and revised the catalogues of Tobias Mayer, Ptolemy, Ulugh Beg, Tycho Brahe, Edmund Halley and Hevelius (Memoirs R. Astr. Soc. iv., xiii).
His notice of "Baily's Beads," during an annular eclipse of the sun on the 15th of May 1836, at Inch Bonney in Roxburghshire, started the modern series of eclipse-expeditions. The phenomenon, which depends upon the inequalities of the moon's limb, was so vividly described by him as to attract an unprecedented amount of attention to the totality of the 8th of July 1842, observed by Baily himself at Pavia. He completed and discussed H. Foster's pendulum-experiments, deducing from them an ellipticity for the earth of 1/289 (Memoirs R. Astr. Soc. vii.); corrected for the length of the seconds-pendulum by introducing a neglected element of reduction; and was entrusted, in 1843, with the reconstruction of the standards of length. His laborious operations for determining the mean density of the earth, carried on by Henry Cavendish's method (1838-1842), yielded for it the authoritative value of 5.66. He died in London, on the 30th of August 1844. Baily's Account of the Rev. John Flamsteed (1835) is of fundamental importance to the scientific history of that time. It included a republication of the British Catalogue.
See J. Herschel's Memoir of F. Baily, Esq. (1845), also prefixed to Baily's Journal of a Tour, with a list of his writings; Month. Not. R. Astr. Soc. xiv. 1844.
BAILY, WILLIAM HELLIER (1819-1888), English palaeontologist, nephew of E. H. Baily the sculptor, was born at Bristol on the 7th of July 1819. From 1837 to 1844 he was Assistant Curator in the Bristol Museum, a post he relinquished to join the staff of the Geological Survey in London. In 1854 he became assistant naturalist, under Edward Forbes and afterwards under Huxley. In 1857 he was transferred to the Irish branch of the Geological Survey, as acting palaeontologist, and retained this post until the end of his life. He was the author of many papers on palaeontological subjects, and of notes on fossils in the explanatory memoirs of the Geological Survey of Ireland. He published (1867-1875) a useful work entitled Figures of Characteristic British Fossils, with Descriptive Remarks, of which only the first volume, dealing with palaeozoic species, was issued. The figures were all drawn on stone by himself. He died at Rathmines near Dublin on the 6th of August 1888.
BAIN, ALEXANDER (1818-1903), Scottish philosopher and educationalist, was born on the 11th of June 1818 in Aberdeen, where he received his first schooling. In early life he was a weaver, hence the punning description of him as Weevir, rex philosophorum. In 1836 he entered Marischal College, and came under the influence of John Cruickshank, professor of mathematics, Thomas Clark, professor of chemistry, and William Knight, professor of natural philosophy. His college career was distinguished, especially in mental philosophy, mathematics and physics. Towards the end of his arts course he became a contributor to the Westminster Review (first article "Electrotype and Daguerreotype," September 1840). This was the beginning of his connexion with John Stuart Mill, which led to a life-long friendship. In 1841 he became substitute for Dr Glennie, the professor of moral philosophy, who, through ill-health, was unable to discharge the active duties of the chair. This post he occupied for three successive sessions, during which he continued writing for the Westminster, and also in 1842 helped Mill with the revision of the MS. of his System of Logic. In 1843 he contributed the first review of the book to the London and Westminster. In 1845 he was appointed professor of mathematics and natural philosophy in the Andersonian University of Glasgow. A year later, preferring a wider field, he resigned the position and devoted himself to literary work. In 1848 he removed to London to fill a post in the board of health, under Edwin Chadwick, and became a prominent member of the brilliant circle which included George Grote and John Stuart Mill. In 1855 he published his first large work, The Senses and the Intellect, followed in 1859 by The Emotions and the Will. These treatises won for him a position among independent thinkers. He was examiner in logical and moral philosophy (1857-1862 and 1864-1869) to the university of London, and in moral science in the Indian Civil Service examinations.
In 1860 he was appointed by the crown to the new chair of
logic and English in the university of Aberdeen (created on the amalgamation of the two colleges, King's and Marischal, by the Scottish Universities Commission of 1858). Up to this date neither logic nor English had received adequate attention in Aberdeen, and Bain devoted himself to supplying these deficiencies. He succeeded not only in raising the standard of education generally in the north of Scotland, but also in forming a school of philosophy and in widely influencing the teaching of English grammar and composition. His efforts were first directed to the preparation of English textbooks: Higher English Grammar (1863), followed in 1866 by the Manual of Rhetoric, in 1872 by A First English Grammar, and in 1874 by the Companion to the Higher Grammar. These works covered a large field and their original views and methods met with wide acceptance. But the other subject of his chair also called for attention. His own philosophical writings already published, especially The Senses and the Intellect (to which was added, in 1861, The Study of Character, including an Estimate of Phrenology), were too large for effective use in the class-room. Accordingly in 1868, he published his Manual of Mental and Moral Science, mainly a condensed form of his treatises, with the doctrines re-stated, and in many instances freshly illustrated, and with many important additions. The year 1870 saw the publication of the Logic. This, too, was a work designed for the use of students; it was based on J. S. Mill, but differed from him in many particulars, and had as distinctive features the treatment of the doctrine of the conservation of energy in connexion with causation and the detailed application of the principles of logic to the various sciences. His services to education in Scotland were now recognized by the conferment of the honorary degree of doctor of laws by the university of Edinburgh in 1871. Next came two publications in "The International Scientific Series," namely, Mind and Body (1872), and Education as a Science (1879).
All these works, from the Higher English Grammar downwards, were written by Bain during his twenty years' professoriate at Aberdeen. To the same period belongs his institution of the philosophical journal Mind; the first number appeared in January 1876, under the editorship of a former pupil, G. Croom Robertson, of University College, London. To this journal Bain contributed many important articles and discussions; and in fact he bore the whole expenses of it till Robertson, owing to ill-health, resigned the editorship in 1891, when it passed into other hands. Bain resigned his professorship in 1880 and was succeeded by William Minto, one of his most brilliant pupils. Nevertheless his interest in thought, and his desire to complete the scheme of work mapped out in earlier years, remained as keen as ever. Accordingly, in 1882 appeared the Biography of James Mill, and accompanying it John Stuart Mill: a Criticism, with Personal Recollections. Next came (1884) a collection of articles and papers, most of which had appeared in magazines, under the title of Practical Essays. This was succeeded (1887, 1888) by a new edition of the Rhetoric, and along with it, a book On Teaching English, being an exhaustive application of the principles of rhetoric to the criticism of style, for the use of teachers; and in 1894 he published a revised edition of The Senses and the Intellect, which contains his last word on psychology. In 1894 also appeared his last contribution to Mind. His last years were spent in privacy at Aberdeen, where he died on the 18th of September 1903. He married twice but left no children.
Bain's life was mainly that of a thinker and a man of letters. But he also took a keen interest and frequently an active part in the political and social movements of the day; and so highly did the students of Aberdeen rate his practical ability, that, after his retirement from the chair of logic, they twice in succession elected him lord rector of the university, each term of office extending over three years. He was a strenuous advocate of reform, especially in the teaching of sciences, and supported the claims of modern languages to a place in the curriculum. A marble bust of him stands in the public library and his portrait hangs in the Marischal College.