Page:Imperial Dictionary of Universal Biography Volume 1.pdf/776

BRA Carver was chosen governor. On the 11th of December (old style), the place since called Plymouth, was fixed on for the site of a town. Twenty huts were erected and occupied. A fatal sickness soon set in, the consequence of bad food and exposure to the weather. Of the hundred and two persons who composed the company, forty-four died before the first of April. At one time during the winter, only six or seven had strength left to nurse the dying and bury the dead. The first week in April Carver died, and Bradford was chosen governor in his place. From that time his history, more than any other man's, is the history of the colony of Plymouth, the oldest English colony, after that of Virginia, on the American continent. Till the third harvest there was at times great distress for want of food, and this exigency divided the governor's attention with the cares of guarding the colony against plots of the Indians, and struggles to meet the approbation of the London partners. The scheme of a community of property was found to work ill for both parties; and at the beginning of the third year, the governor had ventured so far to deviate from it, as to assign to each family the cultivation and profit of a small separate parcel of land; an arrangement which, on observing its favourable operation, he extended in the following year. As the prospect brightened, the emigrants began to hope to be soon joined by their beloved pastor, and their other friends who had remained at Leyden. But there were persons among the London partners who had no sympathy with them in this wish, and who in various ways took care to obstruct its accomplishment. As the inconveniences of the partnership to all concerned were made manifest by trial, negotiations were prosecuted to effect its dissolution. In 1626, Isaac Atherton, one of the principal emigrants, who had been sent to England for the purpose, succeeded in purchasing for the colonists the whole property of the partnership for £1800, payable in nine equal annual instalments—an arrangement speedily followed by another, by which Bradford and four associates, on consideration of conducting the whole trade of the colony for six years and receiving its profits, agreed to pay the debt of the London partners, and perform certain other obligations. This settlement of their affairs enabled them to execute a long-cherished design. Many of their former associates were brought from Holland and settled with them at their expense. Their affairs were assuming a most prosperous shape, and now the larger emigration to Massachusetts commenced. In 1629, Robinson, their spiritual guide, having died shortly before, Bradford went to Salem to assist in the formation of a church, of principles and constitution like those of the church in Plymouth. Governor Winthrop cultivated the same good understanding with his neighbours; and in 1632, the second year after his arrival, made a journey through the woods from Boston to visit Bradford at the older settlement. Notwithstanding Bradford's wish repeatedly expressed to be released from public office, he was chosen governor by annual election for thirty-one years out of the thirty-six years between his arrival and his death; the last twelve years without a single intermission. He died May 9th, 1657, having lengthened out a wise, religious, and heroic life nearly to the limit of threescore years and ten. Though without early advantages for study, and always leading a busy life, he loved learning and found time for study. He spoke French and Dutch, and read Latin, Greek, and Hebrew. He wrote a full history of "Plymouth Plantation from the beginning of the proceedings which led to that enterprise, down to the end of the year 1646." This volume, which, remaining in manuscript, had been used and referred to by historians of Plymouth at different times down to the year 1767, had since that period disappeared. In 1846, Bishop Wilberforce, in his History of the Protestant Episcopal Church in America, made references in foot-notes to a manuscript history of the plantation of Plymouth in the Fulham library. The language of these references was found to coincide with that of passages which had been published by old historians of New England, as extracts from Bradford's history. An application being made to the late bishop of London, his lordship promptly allowed an examination to be made of the manuscript. By marks which had been described in detail by the writers who had formerly used it, it was incontrovertibly proved to be the long-lost autograph of Bradford. It was known to have belonged in 1758 to the New England library, kept in the tower of the Old South church in Boston. In 1755 that church was converted into a riding-school for a force of British cavalry; and there can be little doubt, that at that time the manuscript was abstracted, to find its way eventually, by means not now to be traced, to the library of the bishop of London. Dr. Bloomfield permitted a copy of it to be taken, and the Massachusetts Historical Society published it in 1856, with valuable notes from the hand of Mr. Charles Deane of Cambridge.  BRADLEY,, born at Sherborn in Gloucestershire in 1692; died at Chalford in 1762: the most exact observer of former times in England, the man who, through the rare combination of scientific knowledge and generalizing power, with that fineness of sense and delicacy of touch which are indispensable to a practical astronomer, is entitled to have his name inscribed third on the roll, that, reckoning in the order of time, begins with Hipparchus, and presents us next with Tycho. Newton very early designated Bradley as the "first astronomer of Europe;" nor can his estimate be charged with exaggeration. If we except La-Caille, the lamented Bessel, and two or three others whose names we may not mention, because, happily for science, the men who wear them still survive, Bradley up to this day has had no rival.—The position in Astronomy occupied by this remarkable person is very peculiar. To his general exactness and sagacity no greater tribute could be paid than that in which Bessel has been sustained by the concurrence of the whole scientific world. Desirous to fix with every attainable accuracy the most important constants of Astronomy, the great observer of Königsberg fixed upon the catalogue of Bradley; and he has emphatically recorded the degree of esteem in which he held him, by the labour so willingly bestowed on the reduction of that catalogue, and which resulted in his invaluable Fundamenta Astronomiæ. But we have said Bradley's position is altogether peculiar, and his fame does not rest merely on his general exactness. It has long been known that the crude observation of t he apparent place of a star, in no ways suffices to indicate its true place in the heavens. The apparent place differs from the true place, because of the circumstances in which the observer is placed—circumstances which cause him to see an object external to the earth's atmosphere, as if it were in a position different from the one it really occupies. Until these disarranging influences are understood, and their amount made subject of calculation, there can be no accurate observation; and what is termed Stellar Astronomy could never reach the character of reliability. One of these influences is atmospherical Refraction. Any distant body viewed through the earth's atmosphere appears higher than it really is in the sky; and the amount of displacement varies with the apparent height of the object. This effect of refraction was known before, and Tycho rudely and erroneously allowed for its value. The nature of the true formula was one of the conquests of Bradley. In so far as its structure is concerned, this formula has never been altered. New terms have been added, and the constants Bradley employed somewhat modified; but the correction due to these recent refinements does not exceed half a second of space.—But, besides Refraction, there are other causes of disturbance, the existence as well as the amount of which was discovered by the English astronomer. The first is technically named. Bradley had been puzzled by the existence of small irregularities in the annual position of the fixed stars, of which no previous observation had taken any account. Stars in the plane of the ecliptic seemed to oscillate backwards and forwards by a small quantity in the course of the year; and in every other place in the sky they appeared to describe small ellipses. Dr. Robison of Edinburgh has recorded in his article Seamanship, a curious anecdote as to the mode in which Bradley reached the secret of the phenomenon, and we find it given as follows by Dr. Thomson in his History of the Royal Society:—"When he despaired of being able to account for the phenomena which he had observed, a satisfactory explanation of it occurred to him all at once when he was not in search of it. He accompanied a pleasure party in a sail upon the river Thames. The boat in which they were was provided with a mast, which had a vane upon the top of it. It blew a moderate wind, and the party sailed up and down the river for a considerable time. Dr. Bradley remarked that every time the boat put about, the vane at the top of the boat's mast shifted a little, as if there had been a slight change in the direction of the wind. He observed this three or four times without speaking; at last he mentioned it to the sailors, and expressed his surprise that the wind should shift so regularly every time they put about. The sailors told him that the wind had not shifted, but that the apparent change was owing to the change in 