His son, James Gordon Bennett (1841- ), took over the management of the paper during the last year of its founder’s life, and succeeded him in its control. It was he who sent Henry M. Stanley on his mission to find Livingstone in Central Africa, and he fitted out the “Jeannette” Polar Expedition, and in 1883 established (with John W. Mackay) the Commercial Cable Company.
BENNETT, JOHN, one of the finest English madrigalists, whose first set of madrigals appeared in 1599. In 1614 Ravenscroft, in a collection including five of his madrigals, writes a eulogy which reads like an obituary notice. The first set of madrigals was reprinted in 1845 by the Musical Antiquarian Society. Bennett’s works consist of this set and several contributions to such collections as the Triumphs of Oriana, and to various collections of church music.
BENNETT, JOHN HUGHES (1812-1875), English physician and pathologist, was born in London on the 31st of August 1812. He was educated at Exeter, and being destined for the medical profession was articled to a surgeon in Maidstone. In 1833 he began his studies at Edinburgh, and in 1837 graduated with the highest honours. During the next four years he studied in Paris and Germany, and on his return to Edinburgh in 1841 published a Treatise on Cod-liver Oil as a Therapeutic Agent. In the same year he began to lecture as an extra-academical teacher on histology, drawing attention to the importance of the microscope in the investigation of disease; and as physician to the Royal Dispensary he instituted courses of “polyclinical medicine.” In 1843 he was appointed professor of the institutes of medicine at Edinburgh, and performed the duties of that chair with great energy till incapacitated by failing health. He resigned in 1874. In August 1875 he was able to be present at the meeting of the British Medical Association in Edinburgh, on which occasion he received the degree of LL.D., but the fatigue he then underwent brought on a relapse, and he was compelled to have the operation of lithotomy performed. He sank rapidly and died on the 25th of September at Norwich. His publications were very numerous including Lectures on Clinical Medicine (1850-1856), which in second and subsequent editions were called Clinical Lectures on the Principles and Practice of Medicine, and were translated into various languages, including Russian and Hindu; Leucocythaemia (1852), the first recorded cure of which was published by him in 1845; Outlines of Physiology (1858), reprinted from the 8th edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica; Pathology and Treatment of Pulmonary Tuberculosis (1853); Textbook of Physiology (1871-1872).
BENNETT, SIR WILLIAM STERNDALE (1816-1875), English musical composer, the son of Robert Bennett, an organist, was born at Sheffield on the 13th of April 1816. Having lost his father at an early age, he was brought up at Cambridge by his grandfather, from whom he received his first musical education. He entered the choir of King’s College chapel in 1824. In 1826 he entered the Royal Academy of Music, and remained a pupil of that institution for the next ten years, studying pianoforte under W.H. Holmes and Cipriani Potter, and composition under Lucas and Dr Crotch. It was during this time that he wrote several of his most appreciated works, in which may be traced influences of the contemporary movement of music in Germany, which country he frequently visited during the years 1836-1842. At one of the Rhenish musical festivals in Düsseldorf he made the personal acquaintance of Mendelssohn, and soon afterwards renewed it at Leipzig, where the talented young Englishman was welcomed by the leading musicians of the rising generation. At one of the celebrated Gewandhaus concerts he played his third pianoforte concerto, which was received enthusiastically. An enthusiastic account of the event was written by Robert Schumann, who pronounced Bennett to be the most “musikalisch” of all Englishmen, and “an angel of a musician” (copying Gregory’s pun on Angli and Angeli). But it was Mendelssohn’s influence that dominated Bennett’s mode of utterance. A good example of this may be studied in Bennett’s Capriccio in D minor. His great success on the continent established his position on his return to England. In 1834 he was elected organist of St Anne’s chapel (now church), Wandsworth. In this year he composed his Overture to Parisina, and his Concerto in C minor, modelled on Mozart. An unpublished concerto in F minor, and the overture to the Naiads, impressed the firm of Broadwood so favourably in 1836 that they offered the composer a year in Leipzig, where the Naiads overture was performed at a Gewandhaus concert on the 13th of February 1837. Bennett visited Leipzig a second time in 1840-1841, when he composed his Caprice in E for pianoforte and orchestra and his overture The Wood Nymphs. He settled in London, devoting himself chiefly to practical teaching. In 1844 he married Mary Anne, daughter of Captain James Wood, R.N. He was made musical professor at Cambridge in 1856, the year in which he was engaged as permanent conductor of the Philharmonic Society. This latter post he held until 1866, when he became principal of the Royal Academy of Music. Owing to his professional duties his latter years were not fertile, and what he then wrote was scarcely equal to the productions of his youth. The principal charm of Bennett’s compositions (not to mention his absolute mastery of the musical form) consists in the tenderness of their conception, rising occasionally to sweetest lyrical intensity. Except the opera, Bennett tried his hand at almost all the different forms of vocal and instrumental writing. As his best works in various branches of art, we may mention, for pianoforte solo, and with accompaniment of the orchestra, his three sketches, The Lake, The Millstream and The Fountain, and his 3rd pianoforte concerto; for the orchestra, his Symphony in G minor, and his overture The Naiads; and for voices, his cantata The May Queen, written for the Leeds Festival in 1858. For the jubilee of the Philharmonic Society he wrote the overture Paradise and the Peri in 1862. He also wrote a sacred cantata, The Woman of Samaria, first performed at the Birmingham Musical Festival in 1867. In 1870 the university of Oxford conferred upon him the honorary degree of D.C.L. A year later he was knighted, and in 1872 he received a public testimonial before a large audience at St James’s Hall, the money subscribed being devoted to the foundation of a scholarship at the Royal Academy of Music. Shortly before his death he produced a sonata called the Maid of Orleans, an elaborate piece of programme music based on Schiller’s tragedy. He died at his house in St John’s Wood, London, on the 15th of February 1875. See the Life, by his son (1908).
BEN NEVIS, the highest mountain in the British Isles, in Inverness-shire, Scotland. It is 4406 ft. above the level of the sea, and is situated 4½ m. E.S.E. of Fort William, the meridian of 5° W passing through it. As viewed from Banavie on the Caledonian Canal, it has the appearance of two great masses, one higher than the other, and though its bulk is impressive, its outline is much less striking than that of many other Highland hills. Its summit consists of a plateau 100 acres in area, with a slight slope to the south, terminating on its north-eastern side in a sheer fall of more than 1500 ft. Snow lies in some of the gorges all the year round. The rocks of its lower half are mainly granite and gneiss; its upper half is composed of porphyritic greenstone, and a variety of minerals occur. Its circumference at the base is about 30 m. It may be described as flanked on the west and south by the Glen and Water of Nevis, on the east by the river and Glen of Treig, and on the north by the river and Glen of Spean. From 1881 till 1904 meteorological observations were taken from the summit of Ben Nevis, the observers at first making the ascent daily for the purpose. In 1883, however, an observatory, equipped at a cost of £4000 (raised by public subscription), was opened by Mrs Cameron Campbell of Monzie, who provided the site. The observatory, which was connected by wire with the post office at Fort William, was provisioned by the Scottish Meteorological Society, to whom it belonged. The burden of maintaining it, however, proving too great for the society’s means, appeal was made in vain to government for national support, and the station was closed in 1904. The bridle road up the mountain leaves Glen Nevis at Achintee; it has a gradient nowhere exceeding 1 in 5, and the ascent is commonly effected in two to three hours. There is a small hotel on the summit for the convenience of tourists, especially of those anxious to witness sunrise. From the summit every considerable peak in Scotland is visible. Observations conducted during several months have shown that, whilst the mean temperature at Fort William was 57° F., at the summit of Ben Nevis it was 41° F., and that though the rainfall at the fort amounted to 24 in., it was as much as 43 in. on the top of the Ben.