the town is most famous for the manufacture of tobacco-pipes, a long-established industry. Pottery and bricks are also produced, and at Benthall, 1 m. W., are large encaustic tile works. The early name of the town was Burwardesley.
BROSSES, CHARLES DE (1709–1777), French magistrate and scholar, was born at Dijon and studied law with a view to the magistracy. The bent of his mind, however, was towards literature and science, and, after a visit to Italy in 1739 in company with his friend Jean Baptiste de Lacurne de Sainte-Palaye, he published his Lettres sur l’état actuel de la mile souterraine d’Herculée (Dijon, 1750), the first work upon the ruins of Herculaneum. It was during this Italian tour that he wrote his famous letters on Italy, which remained in MS. till long after his death. In 1760 he published a dissertation, Du culte des dieux fétiches, which was afterwards inserted in the Encyclopédie méthodique. At the solicitation of his friend Buffon, he undertook his Histoire des navigations aux terres australes, which was published in 1756, in two vols. 4to, with maps. It was in this work that de Brosses first laid down the geographical divisions of Australasia and Polynesia, which were afterwards adopted by John Pinkerton and succeeding geographers. He also contributed to the Encyclopédie the articles “Langues,” “Musique,” “Étymologic.” In 1765 appeared his work on the origin of language, Traite de la formation mécanique des langues, the merits of which are recognized by E. B. Tylor in Primitive Culture. De Brosses had been occupied, during a great part of his life, on a translation of Sallust, and in attempting to supply the lost chapters in that celebrated historian. At length in 1777 he published L’Histoire du septième siècle de la république romaine, 3 vols. 4to, to which is prefixed a learned life of Sallust, reprinted at the commencement of the translation of that historian by Jean Baptiste Dureau de La Malle. These literary occupations did not prevent the author from discharging with ability his official duties as first president of the parliament of Burgundy, nor from carrying on a constant and extensive correspondence with the most distinguished literary characters of his time. In 1758 he succeeded the marquis de Caumont in the Académie des Belles-lettres; but when in 1770 he presented himself at the French Academy, his candidature was rejected owing to Voltaire’s opposition on personal grounds. Besides the works already mentioned, he wrote several memoirs and dissertations in the collections of the Academy of Inscriptions, and in those of the Academy of Dijon, and he left behind him several MSS., which were unfortunately lost during the Revolution. His letters on Italy were, however, found in MS. in the confiscated library by his son, the émigré officer René de Brosses, and were first published in 1799, in the uncritical edition of Antoine Serieys, under the title of Lettres historiques et critiques. A fresh edition, freed from errors and interpolations, by R. Colomb, with the title L’Italie il y a cent ans, was issued in 1836; and two subsequent reprints appeared, one edited by Poulet-Malassis, under the title Lettres familières (1858); the other, a re-impression of Colomb’s edition, under that of Le Président de Brosses en Italic (1858).
See H. Mamet, Le President de Brosses, sa vie et ses ouvrages (Lille, 1874); also Cunisset-Carnot, “La Querelle de Voltaire et du président de Brosses,” in the Revue des Deux Mondes (February 15, 1888).
BROTHER, a male person in his relation to the other children of the same father and mother. “Brother” represents in English the Teutonic branch of a word common to the Indo-European languages, of. Ger. Bruder, Dutch broeder, Dan. and Swed. broder, &c. In Celtic languages, Gaelic and Irish have brathair, and Welsh brawd; in Greek the word is φράτηρ, in Lat. frater, from which come the Romanic forms, Fr. frère, Ital. fratello; the Span. fray, Port. frei, like the Ital. frate, fra, are only used of “friars.” The Span. hermano and the Port. irmāo, the regular words for brother, are from Lat. germanus, born of the same father and mother. The Sanskrit word is bhrātār, and the ultimate Indo-European root is generally taken to be bhar, to bear (cf. M. H. Ger. barn, Scot, bairn, child, and such words as “birth,” “burden”). “Brother” has often been loosely used of kinsmen generally, or for members of the same tribe; also for quite fictitious relationships, e.g. “blood-brothers,” through a sacramental rite of mutual blood-tasting, “foster-brothers,” because suckled by the same nurse. Christianity, through the idea of the universal fatherhood of God, conceives all men as brothers; but in a narrower sense “the brethren” are the members of the Church, or, in a narrower still, of a confraternity or “brotherhood” within the Church. This latter idea is reproduced in those fraternal societies, e.g. the Freemasons, the members of which become “brothers” by initiation. “Brother” is also used symbolically, as implying equality, by sovereigns in addressing one another, and also by bishops.
BROTHERS, RICHARD (1757–1824), British religious fanatic, was born in Newfoundland on Christmas day, 1757, and educated at Woolwich. He entered the navy and served under Keppel and Rodney. In 1783 he became lieutenant, and was discharged on half-pay. He travelled on the continent, made an unhappy marriage in 1786, and again went to sea. But he felt that the military calling and Christianity were incompatible and abandoned the former (1789). Further scruples as to the oath required on the receipt of his half-pay reduced him to serious pecuniary straits (1791), and he divided his time between the open air and the workhouse, where he developed the idea that he had a special divine commission, and wrote to the king and the parliament to that effect. In 1793 he declared himself the apostle of a new religion, “the nephew of the Almighty, and prince of the Hebrews, appointed to lead them to the land of Canaan.” At the end of 1794 he began to print his interpretations of prophecy, his first book being A Revealed Knowledge of the Prophecies and Times. In consequence of prophesying the death of the king and the end of the monarchy, he was arrested for treason in 1795, and confined as a criminal lunatic. His case was, however, brought before parliament by his ardent disciple, Nathaniel Halhed, the orientalist, a member of the House of Commons, and he was removed to a private asylum in Islington. Here he wrote a variety of prophetic pamphlets, which gained him many believers, amongst them William Sharp, the engraver, who afterwards deserted him for Joanna Southcott. Brothers, however, had announced that on the 19th of November 1795 he was to be “revealed” as prince of the Hebrews and ruler of the world; and when this date passed without any such manifestation, what enthusiasm he had aroused rapidly dwindled, despite the fact that some of his earlier political predictions (e.g. the violent death of Louis XVI.) had been fulfilled. He died in London on the 25th of January 1824, in the house of John Finlayson, who had secured his release, and who afterwards pestered the government with an enormous claim for Brothers’s maintenance. The supporters of the Anglo-Israelite theory claim him as the first writer on their side.
BROTHERS OF COMMON LIFE, a religious community formerly existing in the Catholic Church. Towards the end of his career Gerhard Groot (q.v.) retired to his native town of Deventer, in the province of Overyssel and the diocese of Utrecht, and gathered about him a number of those who had been “converted” by his preaching or wished to place themselves under his spiritual guidance. With the assistance of Florentius Radewyn, who resigned for the purpose a canonry at Utrecht, he was able to carry out a long-cherished idea of establishing a house wherein devout men might live in community without the monastic vows. The first such community was established at Deventer in the house of Floentius himself (c. 1380); and Thomas à Kempis, who lived in it from 1392 to 1399, has left a description of the manner of life pursued:—
“They humbly imitated the manner of the Apostolic life, and having one heart and mind in God, brought every man what was his own into the common stock, and receiving simple food and clothing avoided taking thought for the morrow. Of their own will they devoted themselves to God, and all busied themselves in obeying their rector or his vicar. . . . They laboured carefully in copying books, being instant continually in sacred study and devout meditation. In the morning, having said Matins, they went to the church (for Mass). . . . Some who were priests and were learned in the divine law preached earnestly in the church.”
