Page:Imperial Dictionary of Universal Biography Volume 1.pdf/786

BRE BREBIETTE,, a French artist, whose works are forgotten, born at Marne on the Seine in 1596. He engraved many religious and classical pictures.—W. T.  BREDA,, a Flemish landscape painter, born at Antwerp in 1683. He was instructed by his father, Alexander, who painted Italian views, fairs, and cattle markets. Breda studied Breughel in the great De Witt gallery. He became celebrated for his exact copies, forgeries, almost twins and undistinguishable. He visited London with Rysbrack the sculptor, who executed the monuments of Prior, Sir Isaac Newton, and the duke of Marlborough, and was patronized by the rich and tasteful, particularly the unfortunate jacobite earl of Derwentwater. On his return to Antwerp, Louis XV. visited his studio, and purchased two landscapes and two scriptural pieces. Breda was a mixture of Wouvermans and Breughel. His skies and distances were thought too blue and gaudy, but his touch was clear, firm, and good, and his colour pure. Some think him equal in fire to Breughel, but Bryan calls him a poor undisguised imitator of Wouvermans. His pictures were generally conversations, fairs, and skirmishes. He died in 1750.—W. T.  BREDAEL,, a Flemish artist, born at Antwerp in 1630. His landscapes were from nature, and his figures were correctly drawn, his trees and water clearly painted, and well handled. He decorated news, and made up scenes with Roman fountains, bas reliefs, and monuments. His style resembles John Breughel, but is inferior. He went to Spain, and was there much patronized. He died in 1681, director of the Antwerp academy, a sure proof he had not too much talent.—W. T.  BREDAL,, a Danish poet, was born at Trondhjem in 1733. His father, also a poet, was the son of Bishop Gr. Bredal, and his mother the niece of Bishop Niels Krog. Breda commenced his studies in 1749. In 1761 he was borgemester of Trondhjem, and ten years later rector of the theatre of Copenhagen. He died in 1778. He was the author of various theatrical works, the most noted of which was "The Royal Succession of Sidon" (Tronfölgen i Sidon), which, brought on the stage soon after Nordahl Brun's Zarine, led to a theatrical war, whence resulted a sounder literary taste in the nation.—M. H.  BREDOW,, a German historian, was born at Berlin, December 14, 1773, and died at Breslau, September 5, 1814. He was successively professor at the universities of Helmstedt, Frankfort, and Breslau, and wrote a number of valuable popular and educational works on history and geography. We quote—"Handbuch der alten Geschichte, Geographie und Chronologie," and "Merkwürdige Begebenheiten aus der allgemeinen Weltgeschichte," 21st ed., 1838.—(Kunisch Bredow's Leben mid Schriften, Berlin, 1816.)—K. E.  BREDSDORFF,, a Danish philologist and naturalist, born at Skjerninge in Zealand in 1790. In 1818 and 1819 he travelled, at the expense of the Danish government, through Germany, Switzerland, Italy, and France; and after assisting in the societies for the advancement of physical science and of rural economy, he became in 1823 lecturer on mineralogy in the university of Copenhagen, and in 1828 professor of botany and mineralogy in the academy of Soroe. He died in 1841. Of his works we notice his "Elements of Geognosy," 1827, and "Handbook for Botanical Excursions," 1834. To his memoir "On the European Mountain-Systems" the prize was awarded by the Geographical Society of Paris in 1825.—W. S. D.  BREEMBERG,, a Flemish landscape painter, born at Utrecht in 1620. He studied at Rome, where the Bentvogels named him "Bartolomeo." He studied nature at the old pumped-dry sources of Tivoli and Frascati, and stuffed his landscapes with composite ruins—with what good old Pilkington calls "an elegant and charming taste." His animals were spirited, his figures well composed. His smaller pictures are his best. His first manner is black, his second abounds in ultramarine. In expression his figures are sensible and lively. He died in 1660. There are extant some forty of his etchings of Roman antiquities.—W. T.  BREGUET,, born in 1747 at Neufchatel; died in 1823. Breguet was one of the nicest, the most exact, and most ingenious mechanicians that France ever produced. After serving some time with his father-in-law, a watchmaker at Neufchatel, young Breguet removed to Paris, and entered on a career of success only interrupted for a time by the troubles of the Revolution. His workmanship has never been surpassed, and his genius, aided by a store of sound mathematical and physical knowledge, enabled him to introduce improvements and invent instruments, of value so great, that his name became renowned through Europe. The French government did not overlook the services of Breguet: he became chronometer-maker to the marine, member of the Bureau des Longitudes, and subsequently member of the Academy of Sciences. Certainly reward has rarely been better merited, for his labours achieved for navigation, for astronomy, for physics, instruments the most accurate, ingenious, and durable; and his taste as an artist was such, that the richness and beauty of his ornamentation was a fit accompaniment of that more permanent and essential excellence which characterized everything issuing from his hands. His specific inventions and improvements are so numerous, that one would almost write a treatise on horology in attempting to enumerate them and to render them appreciated. Berguet early effected what was never done before—the construction of repeaters hermetically sealed, and therefore protected from all dust. He vastly improved the escapement; invented the sympathetic pendulum, the military reckoner or timepiece, the astronomical reckoner, &c. &c. Need we refer to those exquisite watches of so small a diameter, and yet with a double box, that became the envy and ambition of fashionable ladies?—One contribution of Breguet's to physics demands especial mention, viz., the metallic thermometer. This exquisite instrument acts through the enlarging or contracting of a spiral, composed of two or three strips of metals of different moduli of expansion. Its expense prevents its use for ordinary purposes; but in delicacy it immeasurably surpasses all other modes of measuring heat, with the exception of the thermo-multiplier.—Breguet and our horologist Arnold were fast friends.—J. P. N. <section end="786H" /> <section begin="786I" />BREHM,, a distinguished German ornithologist, was born at Schönau in 1787. He made a large collection of European birds, of which he is said to have had more than 5000 specimens. Wrote "Text-Book of the Natural History of the Birds of Europe," Jena, 1823 and 1824.—W. S. D. <section end="786I" /> <section begin="786J" />BREISLAK,, a celebrated geologist, born at Rome in 1748 of German parents. He obtained the professorship of physics and mathematics in Ragusa, and afterwards a professorship at the Collegio Nazareno in Rome. He travelled to Naples and Paris, and made the acquaintance of many eminent French naturalists. While director of an alum factory, near Naples, he had the opportunity of making numerous geological investigations, and in 1811 he published at Milan his "Introduzione alla geologia." He became teacher of physics in the military school at Naples, and afterwards resided in Rome, until the political troubles of his country disturbing him in his studies, he removed to Paris, where he remained until Napoleon appointed him inspector of the manufacture of saltpetre and gunpowder throughout Italy. From this time he resided principally at Milan. He died at Turin in 1826, when his celebrated cabinet of minerals passed to the Borromeo family. His system of geology maintains the singular view that the globe of our earth was originally a fluid mass, which has cooled from within outwards.—W. S. D. <section end="786J" /> <section begin="786K" />* BREITHAUPT,, one of the greatest German mineralogists of the present century, was born at Probstzelle, near Saalfield, in 1791. At Freiberg he studied geology under the celebrated Werner, who obtained him in 1813 the position of inspector of the collections of the academy at Freiberg, and assistant teacher; and in 1827 that of professor of oryctognosy. In his greatest work, "Vollständigs Handbuch der Mineralogie," of which the first volume appeared at Dresden in 1836, he proposes a new system, founded indifferently upon external chemical characters. He wrote several other works on mineralogy and the topography of Freiberg.—W. S. D. <section end="786K" /> <section begin="786Zcontin" />BREITHAUPT,, one of the most distinguished theologians of the school of Spener and Francke, was born in 1658 at Nordheim in Hanover, where his father was pastor and superintendent. He studied for the ministry of the Lutheran church, at Helmstadt, and early manifested an earnest and devout spirit. After being for some time co-rector in Wolfenbüttel, and professor of theology in Kiel, he removed to a chair in the university of Erfurt, where in 1690 he became intimately associated with Francke, who in that year was appointed pastor of the Augustinian church in Erfurt. In 1691 he was appointed, on the recommendation of Spener, professor of theology in the newly founded college of Halle, in which office he became the first representative of that peculiar religious and theological tendency which gave to the school of Halle, in its earlier period, so important and beneficial an influence upon the <section end="786Zcontin" />