Beust was the author of reminiscences: Aus drei Viertel-Jahrhunderten (2 vols., Stuttgart, 1887; English trans. edited by Baron H. de Worms); and he also wrote a shorter work, Erinnerungen zu Erinnerungen (Leipzig, 1881), in answer to attacks made on him by his former colleague, Herr v. Frieseri, in his reminiscences. See also Ebeling, F.F. Graf v. Beust (Leipzig, 1876), a full and careful account of his political career, especially up to 1866; Diplomatic Sketches: No. 1, Count Beust, by Outsider (Baron Carl v. Malortie); Flathe, Geschichte van Sachsen, vol. iii. (Gotha, 1877); Friesen, Erinnerungen aus meinem Leben (Dresden, 1880).
(J. W. He.)
BEUTHEN, or Niederbeuthen, a town of Germany, in the north of Prussian Silesia, on the Oder, the capital of the mediatized principality of Carolath-Beuthen. Pop. (1900) 3164. The chief industries of the place are straw-plaiting, boat-building, and the manufacture of pottery; and a considerable traffic is carried on by means of the river.
BEUTHEN, or Oberbeuthen, a town of Germany, in the extreme south-east of Prussian Silesia, on the railway between Breslau and Cracow, 121 m. S.E. of the former. Pop. (1905) 60,078. It is the centre of the mining district of Upper Silesia, and its population is mainly engaged in such operations and in iron and zinc smelting. Beuthen is an old town, and was formerly the capital of the Bohemian duchy of Beuthen, which in 1620 was ultimately granted, as a free lordship of the Empire, to Lazarus, Baron Henckel von Donnersmarck, by the emperor Ferdinand II., and parts of which, now mediatized, are held by two branches of the counts Henckel von Donnersmarck.
BEVEL (from an O. Fr. word, cf. mod. biveau, a joiner’s instrument), the inclination of one surface of a solid body to another; also, any angle other than a right angle, and particularly, in joinery, the angle to which a piece of timber has to be cut. The mechanic’s instrument known as a bevel consists of a rule with two arms so jointed as to be adjustable to any angle. In heraldry, a bevel is an angular break in a line. Bevelment, as a term of crystallography, means the replacement of an edge of a crystal by two planes equally inclined to the adjacent planes. As an architectural term “bevel” is a sloped or canted edge given to a sill or horizontal course of stone, but is more frequently applied to the canted edges worked round the projecting bands of masonry which for decorative purposes are employed on the quoins of walls or windows and in some cases, with vertical joints, cover the whole wall. When the outer face of the stone band is left rough so that it forms what is known as rusticated masonry, the description would be bevelled and rusticated. The term is sometimes applied to the splaying of the edges of a window on the outside, but the wide expansion made inside in order to admit more light is known as a splay.
BEVERLEY, WILLIAM ROXBY (1814?-1889), English artist and scene-painter, was born at Richmond, Surrey, about 1814, the son of William Roxby, an actor-manager who had assumed the name of Beverley. His four brothers and his sister all entered the theatrical profession, and Beverley soon became both actor and scene-painter. In 1831 his father and his brothers took over the old Durham circuit, and he joined them to play heavy comedy for several seasons, besides painting scenery. His work was first seen in 1831 in London, for the pantomime Baron Munchausen at the Victoria theatre, which was being managed by his brother Henry. He was appointed scenic director for the Covent Garden operas in 1853. In 1854 he entered the service of the Drury Lane theatre under the management of E.T. Smith, and for thirty years continued to produce wonderful scenes for the pantomimes, besides working for Covent Garden and a number of other theatres. In 1851 he executed part of a great diorama of Jerusalem and the Holy Land, and produced dioramic views of the ascent of Mont Blanc, exhibited at the Egyptian Hall, Piccadilly, and in 1884 a panorama of the Lakes of Killarney. He was a frequent exhibitor of sea pictures at the Royal Academy from 1865 to 1880. In 1884 failing eyesight put an end to his painting. He died in comparative poverty at Hampstead on the 17th of May 1889. He was the last of the old school of one surface painters, and famed for the wonderful atmospheric effects he was able to produce. Although he was skilled in all the mechanical devices of the stage, and painted in 1881 scenery for Michael Strogoff at the Adelphi, in which for the first time in England the still life of the stage was placed in harmony with the background, he was strongly opposed to the new school of scene-builders.