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# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Blennerhassett, Harman

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​BLENNERHASSETT, HARMAN (1765–1831), Irish-American lawyer, son of an Irish country gentleman of English stock settled in Co. Kerry, was born on the 8th of October 1765. He was educated at Trinity College, Dublin, and in 1790 was called to the Irish bar. After living for several years on the continent, he married in 1796 his niece, Margaret Agnew, daughter of Robert Agnew, the lieutenant-governor of the Isle of Man. Ostracised by their families for this step the couple decided to settle in America, where Blennerhassett in 1798 bought an island in the Ohio river about 2 m. below Parkersburg, West Virginia. Here in 1805 he received a visit from Aaron Burr (q.v.), in whose conspiracy he became interested, furnishing liberal funds for its support, and offering the use of his island as a rendezvous for the gathering of arms and supplies and the training of volunteers. When the conspiracy collapsed, the mansion and island were occupied and plundered by the Virginia militia. Blennerhassett fled, was twice arrested and remained a prisoner until after Burr’s release. The island was then abandoned, and Blennerhassett was in turn a cotton planter in Mississippi, and a lawyer (1819–1822) in Montreal, Canada. After returning to Ireland, he died in the island of Guernsey on the 2nd of February 1831. His wife, who had considerable literary talent and who published The Deserted Isle (1822) and The Widow of the Rock and Other Poems (1824), returned to the United States in 1840, and died soon afterward in New York City while attempting to obtain through Congress payment for property destroyed on the island.
See William H. Safford, Life of Harman Blennerhassett (Cincinnati, 1853); W. H. Safford (editor), The Blennerhassett Papers (Cincinnati, 1864); and “The True Story of Harman Blennerhassett,” by Therese Blennerhassett-Adams, in the Century Magazine for July 1901, vol. lxii.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Blera

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​BLERA (mod. Bieda), an ancient Etruscan town on the Via Clodia, about 32 m. N.N.W. of Rome. It was of little importance, and is only mentioned by geographers and in inscriptions. It is situated on a long, narrow tongue of rock at the junction of two deep glens. Some remains of the town walls still exist, and also two ancient bridges, both belonging to the Via Clodia, and many tombs hewn in the rock—small chambers imitating the architectural forms of houses, with beams and rafters represented in relief. See G. Dennis, Cities and Cemeteries of Etruria, i. 207. There was another Blera in Apulia, on the road from Venusia to Tarentum.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Braekeleer, Henri Jean Augustin de

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​BRAEKELEER, HENRI JEAN AUGUSTIN DE (1840–1888), Belgian painter, was born at Antwerp. He was trained by his father, a genre painter, and his uncle, Baron Henri Leys, and devoted himself to scenes of everyday Antwerp life. The first pictures he exhibited, “The Laundry” (Van Cutsem collection, Brussels), and “The Coppersmith’s Workshop” (Vleeshovwer collection, Antwerp), were shown at the Antwerp exhibition in 1861. He received the gold medal at Brussels in 1872 for “The Geographer” and “The Lesson” (both in the Brussels gallery); the gold medal at Vienna in 1873 for “The Painter’s Studio” and “Grandmother’s Birthday”; and the medal of honour at the Exposition Universelle at Amsterdam for “The Pilot House.” Among his more notable works are “A Shoemaker” (1862), “A Tailor’s Workroom” (1863), “A Gardener” (1864, Antwerp gallery), “Interior of a Church” (1866), “Interior, Flanders” (1867), “Woman spinning” (1869), “Man reading” (1871), “The rue du Serment, Antwerp” (1875), “A Copperplate Printer,” “The Sailor’s Return,” “The Man at the Window” (Couteaux collection, Brussels), “The Horn-blower” (Couteaux collection), “Man retouching a Picture” (Couteaux collection), “The Potters” (Marlier collection, Brussels), “Staircase in the Hydraulic House at Antwerp” (Marlier collection), and “The Brewer’s House at Antwerp” (Marlier collection). The last, better known as “A Man sitting,” is generally regarded as his masterpiece. As a lithographer and etcher, his work resembles that of Henri Leys. Towards the end of his life de Braekeleer did some dot painting (pointillisme), in which he achieved admirable effects of light.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Braemar

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​BRAEMAR, a district in S.W. Aberdeenshire, Scotland, extending from Ballater in the E. to Glen Dee in the W., a distance of 24 m. with a breadth varying from 3 to 6 m. It is drained throughout by the river Dee, both banks of which are bounded by hills varying from 1000 to nearly 3000 ft. in height. The whole area is distinguished by typical Highland scenery, and is a resort alike for sportsmen and tourists. The villages and clachans (Gaelic for hamlet) being situated at an altitude of from 600 to more than 1000 ft. above the sea, the air is everywhere pure and bracing. The deer forests comprise the royal forests of Balmoral and Ballochbuie, Glen Ey Forest, Mar Forest and Invercauld Forest. At various points on either side of the Dee, granite castles, mansions and lodges have been built, mostly in the Scottish baronial style, and all effectively situated with reference to the wooded hills or the river. The chief of these are Balmoral and Abergeldie Castles belonging to the crown, Invercauld House, Braemar Castle, Mar Lodge and Old Mar Lodge. Castleton of Braemar is the foremost of the villages, being sometimes styled the capital of the Deeside Highlands. Its public buildings include halls erected by the duke of Fife and Colonel Farquharson of Invercauld to commemorate the Victorian jubilee of 1887. Not far from the spot where the brawling Clunie joins the Dee the earl of Mar raised the standard of revolt in 1715. His seat, Braemar Castle, reputed to be a hunting-lodge of Malcolm Canmore, was forfeit along with the estates. The new castle built by the purchasers in 1720 was acquired at a later date by Farquharson of Invercauld, who gave government the use of it during the pacification of the Highlands after the battle of Culloden in 1746. Population of Crathie and Braemar (1901) 1452.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Bradwardine, Thomas

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​BRADWARDINE, THOMAS (c. 1290–1349), English archbishop, called “the Profound Doctor,” was born either at Hartfield in Sussex or at Chichester. He was educated at Merton ​College, Oxford, where he took the degree of doctor of divinity, and acquired the reputation of a profound scholar, a skilful mathematician and an able divine. He was afterwards raised to the high offices of chancellor of the university and professor of divinity. From being chancellor of the diocese of London, he became chaplain and confessor to Edward III., whom he attended during his wars in France. On his return to England, he was successively appointed prebendary of Lincoln, archdeacon of Lincoln (1347), and in 1349 archbishop of Canterbury. He died of the plague at Lambeth on the 26th of August 1349, forty days after his consecration. Chaucer in his Nun’s Priest’s Tale ranks Bradwardine with St Augustine. His great work is a treatise against the Pelagians, entitled De causa Dei contra Pelagium et de virtute causarum, edited by Sir Henry Savile (London, 1618). He wrote also De Geometria speculativa (Paris, 1530); De Arithmetica practica (Paris, 1502); De Proportionibus (Paris, 1495; Venice, 1505); De Quadratura Circuli (Paris, 1495); and an Ars Memorativa, Sloane MSS. No. 3974 in the British Museum.
See Quétif-Échard, Script. Praedic. (1719), i. 744; W. F. Hook, Lives of the Archbishops of Canterbury, vol. iv.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Brag

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​BRAG, a very old game of cards, probably evolved from the ancient Spanish primero, played by five or six, or more players. It is the ancestor of poker. A full pack is used, the cards ranking as at whist, with certain exceptions. There are no trumps. Each player receives three cards and puts up three stakes. The last round is dealt face upwards: the holder of the highest card irrespective of suits wins the first stake from all the players. In the case of equality the elder hand wins, but the ace of diamonds is always a winning card. For the second stake the players brag or bet against each other, if they hold either a pair, or a pair-royal (three cards of the same rank). Pairs and pairs-royal take precedence according to the value of the cards composing them, but any pair-royal beats any pair. The knave of clubs may be counted as any card, e.g. two twos and the knave of clubs rank as a pair-royal in twos; two aces and the knave as a pair-royal in aces. Sometimes the knave of diamonds is allowed the same privilege, but is inferior to the club knave; e.g. two threes and the club would beat the other two threes and the diamond. Players who accept another’s brag must cover his bet and offer another. The third stake is won by the player whose cards make 31 or are nearest to 31 by their pips, aces and court counting ten; but the ace may by arrangement count as 1 or 11. Players may draw from the stock, losing if they over-draw. If one player wins all three stakes, he may receive the value of another stake, or of two or three stakes, all round, as arranged. The deal passes as at whist. Each player should have the same number of deals before the game is abandoned.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Braga

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​BRAGA, a city of northern Portugal, formerly included in the province of Entre Minho e Douro, situated on the right-bank of the small river Deste near its source, and at the head of a railway from Oporto. Pop. (1900) 24,202. Braga, which ranks after Lisbon and Oporto as the third city of the kingdom, is the capital of an administrative district, and an archiepiscopal see. Its cathedral, founded in the 12th century, was rebuilt during the 16th century in the blend of Moorish and florid Gothic styles known as Manoellian. It contains several tombs of considerable historical interest, some fine woodwork carved in the 15th century, and a collection of ancient vestments, plate and other objects of art. Among the other churches Santa Cruz is noteworthy for its handsome façade, which dates from 1642. There are several convents, an archiepiscopal palace, a library, containing many rare books and manuscripts, an orphan asylum, and a large hospital; also the ruins of a theatre, a temple and an aqueduct of Roman workmanship, and a great variety of minor antiquities of different ages. The principal manufactures are firearms, jewelry, cutlery, cloth and felt hats. Large cattle fairs are held in June and September, for cattle-breeding and ​dairy-farming are among the foremost local industries. On a hill about 3 m. E. by S. stands the celebrated sanctuary of Bom Jesus, or Bom Jesus do Monte, visited at Whitsuntide by many thousands of pilgrims, who do public penance as they ascend to the shrine; and about 1 m. beyond it is Mount Sameiro (2535 ft.), crowned by a colossal statue of the Virgin Mary, and commanding a magnificent view of the mountainous country which culminates in the Serra do Gerez, on the north-east.
Braga is the Roman Bracara Augusta, capital of the Callaici Bracarii, or Bracarenses, a tribe who occupied what is now Galicia and northern Portugal. Early in the 5th century it was taken by the Suevi; but about 485 it passed into the hands of the Visigothic conquerors of Spain, whose renunciation of the Arian and Priscillianist heresies, at two synods held here in the 6th century, marks the origin of its ecclesiastical greatness. The archbishops of Braga retain the title of primate of Portugal, and long claimed supremacy over the Spanish church also; but their authority was never accepted throughout Spain. From the Moors, who captured Braga early in the 8th century, the city was retaken in 1040 by Ferdinand I., king of Castile and Leon; and from 1093 to 1147 it was the residence of the Portuguese court.
The administrative district of Braga coincides with the central part of the province of Entre Minho e Douro (q.v.). Pop. (1900) 357,159. Area, 1040 sq. m.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Brady, Nicholas

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​BRADY, NICHOLAS (1659–1726), Anglican divine and poet, was born at Bandon, Co. Cork, on the 28th of October 1659. He received his education at Westminster school, and at Christ Church, Oxford; but he graduated at Trinity College, Dublin. He took orders, and in 1688 was made a prebendary of Cork. He was a zealous promoter of the Revolution and suffered in consequence. When the troubles broke out in Ireland in 1690, Brady, by his influence, thrice prevented the burning of the town of Bandon, after James II. had given orders for its destruction; and the same year he was employed by the people of Bandon to lay their grievances before the English parliament. He soon afterwards settled in London, where he obtained various preferments. At the time of his death, on the 20th of May 1726, he held the livings of Clapham and Richmond. Brady’s best-known work is his metrical version of the Psalms, in which Nahum Tate collaborated with him. It was licensed in 1696, and largely ousted the old version of T. Sternhold and J. Hopkins. He also translated Virgil’s Aeneid, and wrote several smaller poems and dramas, as well as sermons.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Bragi

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​BRAGI, in Scandinavian mythology, the son of Odin, and god of wisdom, poetry and eloquence. At the Scandinavian sacrificial feasts a horn consecrated to Bragi was used as a drinking-cup by the guests, who then vowed to do some great deed which would be worthy of being immortalized in verse.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Blyth

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​BLYTH, a market town and seaport of Northumberland, England, in the parliamentary borough of Morpeth, 9 m. E.S.E. of that town, at the mouth of the river Blyth, on a branch of the North Eastern railway. Pop. of urban district (1901) 5472. This is the port for a considerable coal-mining district, and its harbour, on the south side of the river, is provided with mechanical appliances for shipping coal. There are five dry docks, and upwards of 11/2 m. of quayage. Timber is largely imported. Some shipbuilding and the manufacture of rope, sails and ship-fittings are carried on, and the fisheries are valuable. Blyth is also in considerable favour as a watering-place; there are a pleasant park, a pier, protecting the harbour, about 1 m. in length, and a sandy beach affording sea-bathing. The river Blyth rises near the village of Kirkheaton, and has an easterly course of about 25 m. through a deep, well-wooded and picturesque valley.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Blunt, Wilfrid Scawen

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​BLUNT, WILFRID SCAWEN (1840–), English poet and publicist, was born on the 17th of August 1840 at Petworth House, Sussex, the son of Francis Scawen Blunt, who served in the Peninsular War and was wounded at Corunna. He was educated at Stonyhurst and Oscott, and entered the diplomatic service in 1858, serving successively at Athens, Madrid, Paris and Lisbon. In 1867 he was sent to South America, and on his return to England retired from the service on his marriage with Lady Anne Noel, daughter of the earl of Lovelace and a granddaughter of the poet Byron. In 1872 he succeeded, by the death of his elder brother, to the estate of Crabbet Park, Sussex, where he established a famous stud for the breeding of Arab horses. Mr and Lady Anne Blunt travelled repeatedly in northern Africa, Asia Minor and Arabia, two of their expeditions being described in Lady Anne’s Bedouins of the Euphrates (2 vols., 1879) and A Pilgrimage to Nejd (2 vols., 1881). Mr Blunt became known as an ardent sympathizer with Mahommedan aspirations, and in his Future of Islam (1888) he directed attention to the forces which afterwards produced the movements of Pan-Islamism and Mahdism. He was a violent opponent of the English policy in the Sudan, and in The Wind and the Whirlwind (in verse, 1883) prophesied its downfall. He supported the national party in Egypt, and took a prominent part in the defence of Arabi Pasha. Ideas about India (1885) was the result of two visits to that country, the second in 1883–1884. In 1885 and 1886 he stood unsuccessfully for parliament as a Home Ruler; and in 1887 he was arrested in Ireland while presiding over a political meeting in connexion with the agitation on Lord Clanricarde’s estate, and was imprisoned for two months in Kilmainham. His best-known volume of verse, Love Sonnets of Proteus (1880), is a revelation of his real merits as an emotional poet. The Poetry of Wilfrid Blunt (1888), selected and edited by W. E. Henley and Mr George Wyndham, includes these sonnets, together with “Worth Forest, a Pastoral,” “Griselda” (described as a “society novel in rhymed verse”), translations from the Arabic, and poems which had appeared in other volumes.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Blum, Robert Frederick

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​BLUM, ROBERT FREDERICK (1857–1903), American artist, was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, on the 9th of July 1857. He was employed for a time in a lithographic shop, and studied at the McMicken Art School of Design in Cincinnati, and at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in Philadelphia, but he was practically self-taught, and early showed great and original talent. He settled in New York in 1879, and his first published sketches—of Japanese jugglers—appeared in St Nicholas. His most important work is a large frieze in the Mendelssohn Music Hall, New York, “Music and the Dance” (1895). His pen-and-ink work for the Century magazine attracted wide attention, as did his illustrations for Sir Edwin Arnold’s Japonica. In the country and art of Japan he had been interested for many years. “A Daughter of Japan,” drawn by Blum and W. J. Baer, was the cover of Scribner’s Magazine for May 1893, and was one of the earliest pieces of colour-printing for an American magazine. In Scribner’s for 1893 appeared also his “Artist’s Letters from Japan.” He was an admirer of Fortuny, whose methods somewhat influenced his work. Blum’s Venetian pictures, such as “A Bright Day at Venice” (1882), had lively charm and beauty. He died on the 8th of June 1903 in New York City. He was a member of the National Academy of Design, being elected after his exhibition in 1892 of “The Ameya”; and was president of the Painters in Pastel. Although an excellent draughtsman and etcher, it was as a colourist that he chiefly excelled.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Blunt, John Henry

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​BLUNT, JOHN HENRY (1823–1884), English divine, was born at Chelsea in 1823, and before going to the university of Durham in 1850 was for some years engaged in business as a manufacturing chemist. He was ordained in 1852 and took his M.A. degree in 1855, publishing in the same year a work on The Atonement. He held in succession several preferments, among them the vicarage of Kennington near Oxford (1868), which he vacated in 1873 for the crown living of Beverston in Gloucestershire. He had already gained some reputation as an industrious theologian, and had published among other works an annotated edition of the Prayer Book (1867), a History of the English Reformation (1868), and a Book of Church Law (1872), as well as a useful Dictionary of Doctrinal and Historical Theology (1870). The continuation of these labours was seen in a Dictionary of Sects and Heresies (1874), an Annotated Bible (3 vols., 1878–1879), and a Cyclopaedia of Religion (1884), and received recognition in the shape of the D.D. degree bestowed on him in 1882. He died in London on the 11th of April 1884.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Blumenbach, Johann Friedrich

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​BLUMENBACH, JOHANN FRIEDRICH (1752–1840), German physiologist and anthropologist, was born at Gotha on the 11th of May 1752. After studying medicine at Jena, he graduated doctor at Göttingen in 1775, and was appointed extraordinary professor of medicine in 1776 and ordinary professor in 1778. He died at Göttingen on the 22nd of January 1840. He was the author of Institutiones Physiologicae (1787), and of a Handbuch der vergleichenden Anatomie (1804), both of which were very popular and went through many editions, but he is best known for his work in connexion with anthropology, of which science he has been justly called the founder. He was the first to show the value of comparative anatomy in the study of man’s history, and his craniometrical researches justified his division of the human race into several great varieties or families, of which he enumerated five—the Caucasian or white race, the Mongolian or yellow, the Malayan or brown race, the Negro or black race, and the American or red race. This classification has been very generally received, and most later schemes have been modifications of it. His most important anthropological work was his description of sixty human crania published originally in fasciculi under the title Collectionis suae craniorum diversarum gentium illustratae decades (Göttingen, 1790–1828).
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Blunderbuss

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​BLUNDERBUSS (a corruption of the Dutch donder, thunder, and the Dutch bus; cf. Ger. Büchse, a box or tube, hence a thunder-box or gun), an obsolete muzzle-loading firearm with a bell-shaped muzzle. Its calibre was large so that it could contain many balls or slugs, and it was intended to be fired at a short range, so that some of the charge was sure to take effect. The word is also used by analogy to describe a blundering and random person or talker.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Blunt, John James

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​BLUNT, JOHN JAMES (1794–1855), English divine, was born at Newcastle-under-Lyme in Staffordshire, and educated at St John’s College, Cambridge, where he took his degree as fifteenth wrangler and obtained a fellowship (1816). He was appointed a Wort’s travelling bachelor 1818, and spent some time in Italy and Sicily, afterwards publishing an account of his journey. He proceeded M.A. in 1819, B.D. 1826, and was Hulsean Lecturer in 1831–1832 while holding a curacy in Shropshire. In 1834 he became rector of Great Oakley in Essex, and in 1839 was appointed Lady Margaret professor of divinity at Cambridge. In 1854 he declined the see of Salisbury, and he died on the 18th of June 1855. His chief book was Undesigned Coincidences in the Writings both of the Old and New Testaments ​(1833; fuller edition, 1847). Some of his writings, among them the History of the Christian Church during the First Three Centuries and the lectures On the Right Use of the Early Fathers, were published posthumously.
A short memoir of him appeared in 1856 from the hand of William Selwyn, his successor in the divinity professorship.