BEESLY, EDWARD SPENCER English historian and positivist, son of the Rev. James Beesly, was born at Feckenham, Worcestershire, England, on Jan. 23, 1831, and died at St. Leonards on July 7, 1915. He was educated at Wad ham college, Oxford, which may be regarded as the original centre of the English positivist movement. Richard Congreve was tutor at Wadham from 1849 to 1854, and three men of that time, Frederic Harrison (q.v.), Beesly and John Henry Bridges (1832-1906) became the leaders of Comtism in England. Beesly left Oxford in 1854 to become assistant-master at Marlborough college. In 1859 he was appointed professor of history at Uni versity college, London, and of Latin at Bedford college, London, in 186o. He resigned these appointments in 1889 and respectively, and in 1893 became the editor of the newly estab lished Positivist Review. He collaborated in the translation of Comte's system of Positive Polity (4 vols., 18 7 5-79), translated his Discourse on the Positive Spirit (1903), and wrote a biography of Comte for a translation of the first two chapters of his Cours de philosophie positive, entitled Fundamental Principles of Posi tive Philosophy (1905) .