REAGENT 447 REALISM lord chief-justice in 1913 and elevated to the peerage. In 1915 he came to America to negotiate the Anglo-French loan, which he successfully accomplished. Upon the death of the British ambassa- dor at Washington, Earl Reading was commissioned to take his place, where he remained until 1918, when he returned to England to resume his position as lord chief -justice. He was appointed Viceroy of India in 1920. BEAGENT, in chemistry, any sub- stance employed to bring about a chem- ical reaction or change in another element, or compound, with the view generally of either detecting its presence or affecting its separation from other substances. BEAL, the old unit of value in Spain. By the monetary law of June, 1864, the silver real was made to weigh 1.298 grammes, .81 fine, and equivalent to AVz cents. The real has varied in value from AVz to 10 cents. BEAL, in law, pertaining to things fixed, permanent or immovable. Thus real estate is landed property, including all estates and interest in lands which are held for life or for some greater estate, and whether such lands be of freehold or copyhold tenure. So a real action is an action brought for the specific re- covery of lands, tenements, and heredita- ments. BEAL COMPOSITION, in law, an agreement made between the owner of land in countries having an endowed church and the parson or vicar with consent of the ordinary, that such lands shall be discharged from payment of tithes, in consequence of other land or recompense given to the parson in lieu and satisfaction thereof. BEALF, BICHABD, an English- American poet; born in Framfield, Sus- sex, England, June 14, 1834. At 18 he published, under the patronage of several literary people, a collection of poems, "Guesses at the Beautiful." In 1854 he came to the United States, enlisted in the army in 1862, and wrote some of his best lyrics in the field. His most admired poems are: "My Slain," "An Old Man's Idyl," and "Indirection." He died in Oakland, Cal., Oct. 28, 1878. BEALGAB, a monoclinic mineral, oc- curring but rarely in crystals, but mostly granular to compact-massive. Hardness, 1.5-2; sp. gr., 3.4-3.6; luster, resinous; color and streak, aurora-red to orange- yellow; transparent to translucent; frac- ture, conchoidal; brittle. Occurs in fine crystals in Hungary and Transylvania, . and massive in many localities, fre- quently associated with orpiment; on ex- posure to light changes to orpiment. In chemistry, AsS^. A sulphide of arsenic formed artificially by heating arsenic acid with the proper proportion of sul- phur. It is a fusible and volatile sub- stance, having an orange-red color, is used for painting and for the production of white-fire. BEALISM, in philosophy, a doctrine diametrically opposed to Nominalism, as involving the belief that genus and species are real things, existing inde- pendently of our conceptions and their expressions, and that these are alike actually the object of our thoughts when we make use of the terms. Again, as opposed to Idealism, the word implies an intuitive cognition of the external ob- ject, instead of merely a mediate and representative knowledge of it. In art and literature the word realism or naturalism is employed to describe a method of representation without ideal- ization, which in our day in France has been raised to a system and claims a monopoly of truth in its artistic treat- ment of the facts of nature and life. It claims that the enthusiasms and ex- aggerations of romanticism must give place to a period of reflection and criti- cism; that we must not select from the facts put before our eyes, but merely register them and the sensations they engender for themselves alone, apart from all considerations of mere beauty, to say nothing of religion or morality; and that the experimental romance must hereafter follov/ the rigid methods of science, in being based alone on "human documents" supplied from the close ob- servation of the present, or from labo- rious erudition — the retrospective obser- vation of the past. As a gospel this militant realism is the offspring of the positive philosophy and the physiology and psychology of the age; and in effect, in the hands of its apostles, it has become a new morality which re- forms not by precept but example, not by the attraction of the good, but by the repulsion of the evil. The practical result is that for French realists there is in the moral world only the evil, in the visible world only the ugly, and the triumphs of modern fiction are the piti- less impersonality of "Madame Bovary," the cold splendors of "Salammbo," the vulgarities of Zola, the refined sensual- ism of Bourget and Guy de Maupassant, the pretentious inanities of the Gon- court brothers, and the dreary pessim- ism of Dostoievsky and Tolstoi. If real- ism were perfect it would_ include all reality, order as well as disorder, the
