Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 4.djvu/444

396 goods. The of  and  came laden with the produce of the East; s of every  took in and discharged their es at the s; the s were filled with bales of  from, and with  from. Not the least famous of the was that of, in which the people of Bruges acquired great skill a century before the s of  or the  were set up. The prosperity of Bruges was undiminished till it passed under the dominion of the. For a violation of some of their prerogatives, the inhabitants imprisoned the in 1488, and a terrible vengeance was inflicted upon the town for this outrage. Its was transferred to, and its ruin was ultimately completed by the  persecutions of the bloody  at the end of the 16th century. Such of the inhabitants as escaped with their lives fled to and introduced into that  many of the  and  which they and their forefathers had cultivated with success for many generations. In more modern times the town has frequently suffered from the effects of. In 1704 it was besieged by the, and in 1708 and 1745 it was captured by the. The contrast between the Bruges of the 15th century and the Bruges of recent time's is as striking as it is painful. As says&mdash;

The great of the city, its numerous s and s, and the number and magnificence of its public s, all attest its former importance; while the comparative absence of, and the general air of desolation, bear witness to its present insignificance. Its has, however, considerably revived during the present century, and its great advantages in  and  communication, its spacious s and excellent s, and the great fertility of the surrounding, are once more restoring it to its high place among. Of the public s of Bruges the most remarkable are the of, containing a  of the  and , said to be by ,  in  of  and , who are buried in the ; the  of St Sauveur, built of , but internally the handsomest  in Bruges, with some fine s by  (or, more correctly, Memling, &mdash; see Athenæum, No. 2513) and ; the  of , a charitable institution, where  persons are attended by the ; the , which is the oldest in ; the , a fine , partly on the site of the old  of the s of ; and the undefined, a small but handsome edifice, dating from 1377 and restored in the present century, in the niches of which there were formerly s of the old s of , which were destroyed by the  in 1792. The - in the great, of which sings so finely, is the most beautiful structure of the kind in Europe, and its s are the best in. It was erected at the end of the 14th century, and is still used for communicating the of  by a  or a  to all parts of the. In this same is a house in which  resided during his  from. Among the conventual establishments the most important are the age and the. The is likewise well provided with the means of. There is a, to which is attached a  of  and a. For the higher departments of there is an excellent, annually subsidized by , besides a  , a  of , and an institution for the  and  and. The of  is in a very flourishing condition, and offers many advantages to the student, as instruction is given gratis in  and. The public in the  contains upwards of 15,000. The charitable institutions of Bruges are both numerous and well organized. They are all the more necessary, that the number of persons in the city requiring support is unusually great. In the alone there is accommodation for nearly 600 individuals, and it is almost always completely filled. The most important in Bruges is that of. The other consist of s, len and  goods,, , , , , and s. There are also some small  and , and  and ing establishments; and  is also carried on. The s from Bruges comprise the products of the rich agricultural district that surrounds the ; the s include s,, , , , , and. Despite the number of s, the inhabitants of Bruges are very ill supplied with for domestic purposes; every house is accordingly provided with a tank or butt to receive -. The quantity collected in the public tanks is distributed through the in s. Of the s the largest is that to, wide and deep enough to allow vessels of 500 s to pass up from the. The ramifications of these s intersect the in all directions, and are crossed by upwards of fifty, whence the name of the town is derived. in 1838, 44,374; in 1846, 49,308; in 1851, 50,698; in 1866, 49,819.

1em  BRUMATH, or, a town of Lower Alsace, in the circle of Strasburg, on the River Zorn. It has a castle and mineral wells, and occupies the site of the ancient Brucomagus. Population in 1871,5619.  BRUNCK, (1729-1803), a French scholar, was born at Strasburg, 20th December 1729. He was educated at the Jesuits college at Paris, but having early entered the public service, he soon forgot his Latin and Greek. At the age of thirty he returned to his native town and resumed his studies, paying special attention to Greek. The nature of the office which he held put considerable sums of money at his disposal, which he expended in publishing editions of the Greek classics. The first work which he edited was the Anthologia Grava, in which his innovations on the established mode of criticism startled European scholars ; for wherever it seemed to him that an obscure or difficult passage might be made intel ligible and easy by a change of text, he did not scruple to make the necessary alterations, whether the new reading were supported by manuscript authority or not. With the assistance of Schweighauser, then an unknown youth, he next brought out editions of the Greek dramatists, charac terized by the same peculiarities as the Anthologia, and ultimately the Gnomici Foetce Greed. In 1781 he pub lished an edition of Vir,/il, for which he was pensioned by the French king. At the outbreak of the French Revolution, in which he took an active part, he lost his pension, and was reduced to such extremities that he was obliged to sell a portion of his library. In 1802 his pension was restored to him, but too late to prevent the sale of the remainder of his books. He had brought out an edition of Plautus in 1788, and was in the act of republishing it when he died, June 12, 1803.  BRUNDUSIUM, or. See.  BRUNEL, (1806-1859), one of the most distinguished civil engineers of the age, was born at Portsmouth, April 9, 1806. He was the only son of Sir 