BONN, town of Rhenish Prussia, Germany, on the left bank of the Rhine, 15m. S. by E. from Cologne. Pop. (1885) 35,989; (19o5) 81,997; (1933) 98,8o9. The river is here crossed by a fine bridge (1898), 1,417ft. in length, flanked by an embankment 21-m. long, parallel with which is the Coblenzer-strasse, with villas and gardens, which add greatly to the appearance of the town from the river. Bonn (Bonna or Castra Bonnensia), a Roman military settlement, was the scene, in A.D. 7o, of a defeat of the Romans. Greatly reduced by successive barbarian inroads, it was restored about 359 by the emperor Julian. In the cen turies that followed the break-up of the Roman empire it again suffered, and was finally devastated in 889 by bands of Norse raiders. Fortified again in the i3th century, from 1265 to 1794 it was the residence of the electors of Cologne. During the vari ous wars of the i6th, i7th and i8th centuries, the town was fre quently besieged. Occupied by the French after 1794, it was made over by the Congress of Vienna (1815) to Prussia. The fortifi cations were dismantled in 1717. The central part of the town, with its narrow streets, contains the Munster (minster), built of grey stone, in Romanesque and Transition styles (12th and i3th centuries). It is surmounted by five towers, of which the central (3i5ft.) is a landmark in the Rhine valley. The Minoritenkirche dates from 1278-1318, but the other churches are more recent. The town hall on the market square dates from 1737 and there is a fine block of law-court buildings. The finest building, however, is the famous university (1786-1818), which occupies the larger part of the southern frontage of the town. Originally the electoral palace of the archbishops of Cologne, it was constructed about 1717 out of the materials of the old fortifications, and remodelled after the town came into Prussian possession. There are five faculties—a legal, a medical, and a philosophical, and one of Roman Catholic and one of Protestant theology. The museum contains a valuable collection of Roman relics discovered in the neighbourhood. An academy of agriculture, with a natural history museum and botanic garden, is established in the palace of Clem ensruhe at Poppelsdorf, reached by a long avenue of double rows of chestnut trees. A splendid observatory, long under the charge of Friedrich Wilhelm Argelander, stands on the south side of the road. On the Kreuzberg, above the suburb of Poppelsdorf, is a i7th century church and Franciscan monastery, approached by a flight of "holy steps," in imitation of those at Rome. Only one tower. "Der alte Zoll," commanding a magnificent view of the Siebengebirge, remains of the old fortifications. Beethoven was born in Bonn, and a statue was erected to him in the Miinster platz in 1845. In 1889 a museum of Beethoven relics was opened in the house where he was born. The chief manufactures are stoneware and office furniture. Numbers of foreign residents are attracted by the scenery and by the educational facilities. BONNAT, LEON JOSEPH FLORENTIN French portrait-painter, was born at Bayonne on June 20, 1833, and died on Sept. 8, 1922. He studied under Madrazo at Madrid, and under Cogniet in Paris. His earlier works were genre and historical paintings in which his study of old Spanish art was evident. The long series of characteristic portraits began in In these he drew inspiration from Velasquez and the Spanish realists. He painted Thiers, Victor Hugo, Carnot, Taine, Pasteur and other contemporaries, some 200 in all, the finest of these being perhaps the portrait of Leon Cogniet in the Luxembourg. In 1888 he became professor of painting at the ncole des Beaux Arts, and in 1905 director.