French physician, who enjoyed an almost romantic but very brief popularity as the founder of the so-called physiological school of medical theorists, was born at St. Malo, 1772, and died 1838.
BROUSSIER, Jean Baptiste, Count, a French general, born in 1766; died in 1814. In 1798, after some brilliant services as a volunteer, he was sent to Italy in command of a small force, with which, having drawn a body of Austrians, 10,000 strong, into an ambuscade near Benevento, he cut them in pieces almost without the loss of a man. For his share in the taking of Naples, and his exploits in the province of Apulia, where, with a handful of men, he annihilated the army of Cardinal Ruffo, he was rewarded by the directory with a sword of honour. In 1804 he was commandant in Paris; in 1805 named general of division; in 1806 again sent to Italy, where he revived the memory of his former successes, by manœuvring his division with equal skill and intrepidity, in the face of three armies, for the period of a month, and in spite of fearful odds occasionally giving battle; "one against ten" was inscribed on the colours of one of his regiments by order of Napoleon, who wished to perpetuate the remembrance of his general's audacity. At Wagram, according to Napoleon, he covered himself with glory. He was created count of the empire for his services in that engagement. After subduing the Tyrol, he took part in the march to Moscow, increased his reputation, and returned broken in health to witness the ruin of the empire.—J. S., G.
BROUWER or BRAUWER, Adrian. This dissolute rollicking boor, and the best painter of boors perhaps that ever lived, was born at Haerlem in 1608, the flat country folk receiving him at his birth without, as we have ever heard, any very peculiar honours. His parents were very poor, miserably poor, and his mother lived by selling to the peasants bonnets and handkerchiefs and simple lace work, on which her child Adrian painted rude flowers and birds. The great Franc Hals, Vandyck's friend, on passing the cabin one day, saw the boy at work, watched him, and was surprised at the facility and taste with which he drew. More from greediness than kindness, old Hunx Hals offered to take him as apprentice, and off, delighted, goes Adrian. Soon he beats all his companions, and is declared a genius. Hunx liking such a milch-cow, locks him up in a garret to paint all day, like a slave, small pictures, which Hals sold for large prices. He flogs, he starves the milch-cow, and milch-cow not having got her full horns, does not gore him, but moans bitterly, and wishes for the butcher, death. One day a head peeps into the garret—it is Ostade's, his old friend, who tells him, with kindling eye, how cruel and unjust Hunx is—lets him out, and sets him off, God speeding, on the Amsterdam road, much to Hunx's dismay when he comes up for his next pail of milk. Horses and after him; he is found in a church and dragged back again, when the old cruelty returns; he escapes, and getting to Amsterdam, to his astonishment finds himself in a sort of Dutch paradise—his pictures in the windows—his name up. He paints some boors fighting; the innkeeper or printseller where he lodges brings him back for it a hundred ducatoons—more money than he had ever seen. Now the old swine's blood breaks out; he spends it all in ten days, and thanks God he is free of it, and once more able to work. Brouwer should have lived at Portsmouth, and painted and drank with sailors. This Brouwer was the Dutch Morland. He went on—now drinking, and working, and burning pictures for which he could not get his price; then longing for new honour, and knowing that Rubens admired his works, he set out for Antwerp, at a time when the states-general are at war with Spain. Careless, and taking no passport, he is arrested as a spy and thrown into the citadel prison, where the duke d'Aremberg was then confined. The prisoner laughs at Brouwer; the duke gets interested, and sends to Rubens for brushes and paints, to try the supposed cheat or madman. The prisoner sets calmly and confidently to work, and paints some soldiers playing at cards under the window. Rubens' eyes sparkle when he sees it: he cries out—"This is Brouwer." He offers the duke 600 guilders for it; the duke will not part with it, but rewards Brouwer largely. Rubens obtains his release, and takes him to his own house; but the rules and dignity of that great mansion do not please the pothouse man. He leaves Rubens, wanders about France, returns a vagabond, is struck with fever, and dies in 1640 in the hospital. Again the princely Fleming steps in, and the body of the poor swinish genius is buried with kingly ceremonies in the church of the Carmelites, and a superb monument erected to the son of the Haerlem bonnetmaker. For finish, transparence, and colour, Brouwer is inestimable; several of his designs were etched by himself. In humorous expression he anticipated Hogarth. His subjects were—droll conversations; tavern rows; drunken frays; boor card-players; surgeons dressing wounds; monkeys smoking; peasants dancing; flageolet-playing; women making cakes; in fact, "what he saw not, what he did not see," as Keyler says of him. He never falls into the mannerism of Teniers, nor the common-place want of meaning which may sometimes be observed in Ostade. When he caricatures, which he often does, it is always without effort, and the exaggeration only consists in a higher degree of merriment or animation, or of suffering under the hands of the village barber. In one picture we see the most delightful expression of stupid gravity in the face of a boor, who is lighting his pipe; in another, it is a singer, who cannot forbear to chant his accustomed strain in all the smoke of the alehouse; or a fellow who endeavours, in the most ridiculous manner, to conceal his pain, whilst the doctor takes the plaster from his arm. Brouwer's native country possesses few of his pictures, but in the German galleries they are not rare—that of Munich, in particular, contains a great number of them. Joseph Craesbecke, a baker, is said to have been the companion of Brouwer in his dissolute courses, and to have received instruction from him in painting. The pictures ascribed to him in the Schleissheim gallery resemble Brouwer's, but are less spirited. In the Imperial gallery of the Belvedere, and the Lichtenstien gallery of Vienna, there are some pictures under his name of less vulgar subjects, treated in the manner of Rembrandt's school.—W. T.
BROWALL or BROWALLIUS, Jean, a Swedish theologian and naturalist, was born at Westras on 30th August, 1707, and died 25th July, 1755. He studied theology at Upsal, and in 1737 was elected professor of natural history at Abo. He finally became bishop of Abo, and a member of the Academy of Sciences of Stockholm. He wrote many works on natural history and botany. Among others, an examination and defence of the Linnæan system, remarks on the transmutation of species, and on the fructification of plants as compared with animal generation. Linnæus dedicated the genus Browallia to him.—J. H. B.
BROWN, Charles Brockden, an American novelist and man of letters, born at Philadelphia, January 17, 1771; died February 22, 1810. He was of a highly respectable family, of Quaker descent. Soon after he was sixteen, he devoted himself to the composition of three unpublished epic poems on the discovery of America, and the conquests of Peru and Mexico. He studied law with great ardour, but took a disgust to the practice of the profession, and abandoned it for literature. His first publication was "Alcuin, a Dialogue on the Rights of Women," which appeared in 1797; followed in 1798 by "Wieland, or the Transformation," a novel; and in 1799 by "Ormond, or the Secret Witness." In 1798 he established himself in the city of New York; and when the yellow fever broke out there. Brown refused to forsake his friends and neighbours; and after performing the last offices of affection for one of them, a young physician, was himself attacked by the pestilence. His conceptions of the disease he embodied in his next work, "Arthur Mervyn, or Memoirs of the Year 1793." Soon after he became editor of the Monthly Magazine and American Review, a periodical which came to an end in the course of the ensuing twelvemonth. The publication of "Arthur Mervyn" was quickly succeeded by that of "Edgar Huntly, or the Adventures of a Sleep Walker." The second part of "Arthur Mervyn" appeared in 1800; and "Clara Howard" in 1801; and in 1804 the series of his romances was closed with "Jane Talbot," first printed in England. In 1801 he returned to Philadelphia, and soon undertook the management of the Literary Magazine and American Register. In 1804 he married Elizabeth, daughter of Dr. William Linn, a presbyterian divine of New York. He projected the plan of an Annual Register, the first work of the kind in the United States, and edited the first volume of it in 1806. To the pages of the two last-named periodicals, as well as to those of the Portfolio, his contributions were large and various. Between 1803 and 1809 he published three political pamphlets, which excited general attention. His health gave way, and a voyage to Europe was recommended; but he could not make up his mind to leave his family for any length of time, and tried only a short excursion into New Jersey and New York in the summer of 1809. Finding this was of no effect, he agreed to go abroad in the following spring, which he did not
