Page:Imperial Dictionary of Universal Biography Volume 1.pdf/839

BRY Byron;" "Recollections of Foreign Travel;" "Stemmata illustria, præcipue regia;" his own "Autobiography, Times, Opinions, and Contemporaries," in two volumes 8vo; an edition of Collins' Peerage, in nine volumes 8vo; a number of poems, novels, works on politics and political economy, &c. &c. He established a private printing-press at Lee Priory, from which a number of valuable and curious works issued. Sir Egerton was undoubtedly a man of real genius, and of high accomplishments of a certain class; but both his usefulness and happiness were sadly marred by his inordinate pride and ambition, and by his eccentricities and unsteadiness of purpose.—(Gent. Mag., vol. viii.)—J. T.  BRYDONE,, known as the author of a "Tour through Sicily and Malta," was a native of Scotland, where he was born in 1743. As a travelling tutor, he made several excursions to the continent, visiting Sicily and Malta in 1770. His book appeared in 1773, and attracted considerable attention, especially on account of some speculations, borrowed from Recupero, which he introduced with regard to the age of the earth, as calculated from the number of eruptions of Mount Etna, shown by the strata of the lava. Brydone was made comptroller of the stamp-office. He found time to devote himself to experiments on electricity, which won him honour in the Royal Society. His later years were spent in retirement at Lennel house, near Coldstream, where he died in 1818. He is the "reverend pilgrim" in the stanzas of Marmion descriptive of the hero's halt at "Lennel's convent."—J. B.  BRYNE or BRYAN,, organist of St. Paul's cathedral at the time of the great fire of London in 1666. He was a pupil of John Tomkins, and succeeded Dr. Christopher Gibbons as organist of Westminster abbey in 1667. Many of his services and anthems exist in the books of the various cathedrals. He died in the reign of Charles II., and was buried in the cloisters of Westminster abbey.—E. F. R.  BUAT,, knight of the order of St. John of Jerusalem, of the order of St. Louis, and colonel of the royal engineers of France. He published a first work on hydraulics in 1779, founded on the experiments of previous authors; but seeing the necessity of further experimental knowledge on many points, he obtained an annual grant from the government for that purpose, which he applied in the most judicious manner for four years, making experiments—chiefly on the resistance of fluids, and on their flow in tubes and channels, and through orifices—which formed the foundation not only of his own mathematical researches, but of most of those of subsequent writers on hydraulics down to the present time. In conducting those investigations, Du Buat may be said to have invented a new mode of combining theoretical reasoning with experiment, peculiarly suited to branches of science in that imperfect and provisional state in which hydraulics then was and still continues. His experiments, with the theoretical conclusions founded on them, were published in two octavo volumes in 1786, under the title of "Principes d'Hydraulique," forming a work which will always be held in the highest esteem by those who appreciate the right method of inquiry in physico-mathematical science. The most important of Du Buat's discoveries, and that which forms the key to all the rest, is the law that the friction of a mass of fluid (which either directly or indirectly is the only cause of resistance to its motion, or to that of a solid body through it) is independent of the pressure, and is proportional to the density of the fluid, to the extent of the surface of contact between the fluid and the body along which it glides, and very nearly to the square of their relative velocity.—W. J. M. R.  BUCER,, a celebrated reformer, was born at Schlettstadt in Alsace in 1491. When not quite fifteen years of age he entered the Dominican order, and repaired to Heidelberg, and entered on the study of Hebrew, Greek, and theology. Having listened to a conference between Luther and some scholastic doctors, he was deeply impressed with many of the reformer's opinions, admiring, as he phrases it, "his Pauline clearness and comprehensive Biblical knowledge." On his formally espousing the new doctrines, he was bitterly persecuted, but was received by the Palsgrave Frederick, who made him his court-chaplain in 1521. In the following year he resigned this situation and married a nun. Changing his residence more than once, he was reduced to extreme poverty, and betook himself to Strasburg. Catholicism had been considerably shaken in that city already, and Bucer willingly and energetically threw himself into the movement, and was unanimously chosen minister in 1524. The sacramentarian controversy had begun to divide the reformers, and Bucer was anxious to adopt healing measures. His own opinions on the eucharist were, at this period, fully nearer those of Zuingle than those of Luther. But his efforts with both parties were to no purpose, and Luther and he exchanged some hard and unworthy words. At a famous consultation at Marburg, Bucer took part with the Swiss, holding to the notion of "Christ being ever present, by his Spirit, in the sacrament." Bucer took a part in many other attempts at mediation between the conflicting parties, but these attempts were vain, and he only earned the title of a time-server. Such was Bucer's love of peace, that he entered into a conference with the catholics, doing so, however, at the command of the emperor. But he would not subscribe to the Augsburg Interim; and as his firmness involved him in no little danger, he accepted the invitation of Archbishop Cranmer, and landed in England in April, 1549. The king appointed him professor of theology at Cambridge, and the university conferred upon him the title of D.D. King Edward had a great respect for him, and on one occasion sent him a hundred crowns to buy a German stove. But his constitution had been shattered, and the return of a previous ailment cut him off on the 28th of February, 1551. He was buried with great pomp. During the reign of Mary in 1554, his tomb was broken into, and his bones disinterred and burnt. Queen Elizabeth rebuilt his monument in 1560.

Bucer was a man in whom the spiritual had the ascendancy over the intellectual portion of his nature. He was fond of peace at almost any price, but compromise served no purpose in that keen polemical age. He must have been reckoned a man of tact, but his pacific enterprises usually failed. He could not create the current, but he nobly strove to direct it. His works are numerous, and indicate talent and industry. They are distinguished, not by any original power, but by facility of illustration and promptitude of argument, and are enriched with a vigorous piety, and a hearty desire to secure the progress of truth and the peace of the church. Some of Bucer's commentaries are not without value in the present day. As a reformer, he had neither Luther's courage, Melancthon's erudition, nor Calvin's logical faculty; his action was confined to a subordinate sphere; strong partisans suspected him, but his toils and sufferings prove his integrity. His character was so pure, that it was never assailed, even in those days of unscrupulous calumny and satire.—J. E.  BUCH,, one of the greatest of modern geologists, born in Uckermark, on the banks of the Oder, in 1774; died in the spring of 1853. His labours constitute an epoch in the science of his predilection. The life of Von Buch was essentially a life of transition: he began as the disciple of Werner; when his labours closed, no doubt could rest in any candid mind, that he had destroyed the authority of that great master. The early progress of rational geology evolved the conflict of two systems, that soon became two conflicting schools. At the head of one was Von Buch's teacher, Werner of Freyberg. It was the fixed opinion of Werner, who lived and wrought mainly among the stratified rocks, that all rocks now existing have been laid down by the action of water—some in the way of the mere subsidence of materials suspended for a time in the primal ocean—others in a crystalline form, because of the slow separation of materials originally held in solution by that ocean. Fortunately, Von Buch had the genius of the traveller, as well as the acuteness and sternness of the explorer; and the conclusion he finally reached was deduced from inspection of the most striking and spacious aspects of Nature within range of our European continent. At Perugino, and in presence of Vesuvius, he learned that the volcanic forces could not be exceptional disturbances, and lightly dismissed as such. His letters from these regions are written under a pervading sense of the wonderful. In search of farther insight, he turned his steps towards Auvergne. In 1751, the Frenchman Guettard first penetrated the character of this remote and mysterious region; and, twelve years later, Desmarets traced through it a long chain of extinct volcanoes, associated with countless and gigantic masses of basalts, or "giants' causeways," mingling apparently with fresher lavas and ashes still more recent. This, and much more than Desmarets could see, burst upon the full although only half-opened eye of Von Buch. Gazing on the long chain of Puys that stretch away down from Mont Doré, he saw, as if by presentiment, that he was surely looking on more than a group of independent volcanoes—that the entire mass of Mont Doré might 