well, the Maidenhead bridge, and the Box tunnel, still remain objects of great interest to the professional student, as well as to the ordinary sight-seer. As a railway engineer, if not always successful in carrying out his magnificent schemes, Brunel was at least fortunate in the recurrence of great opportunities. In the construction of the South Devon and Cornish railways, no less than in that of the Great Western, the range and amplitude of his resources were abundantly tested. The sea wall of the former railway, the bridge over the Tamar, called the Albert bridge, and the bridge over the Wye at Chepstow, show that it was with no inglorious result. On the South Devon railway Brunel tried, but without success, the plan previously adopted on the London and Croydon line, of propelling the carriages by atmospheric pressure. As is well known, it was his connection with the Great Western railway that led Brunel into another department of his art, viz. shipbuilding. The Great Western, the power and tonnage of which was double that of the largest ship afloat at the time of her construction, was built under the supervision of Brunel, to run between England and America. The Great Britain, which was double the tonnage of the Great Western, and twice the size of the largest iron vessel afloat, came next. When this magnificent ship was wrecked upon the rocks in Dundrum Bay, Brunel's views of her superiority in point of strength to any vessel constructed of wood, were signally confirmed, and he had eventually the satisfaction of seeing her again afloat. It must be recorded to the honour of this great engineer, that he was among the first of his profession to recognize the advantages of the screw as a propeller. He adopted it in the Great Britain, and the first ship in the British navy which was furnished with a screw was fitted with it at the instigation and under the direction of Brunel. In 1851 and 1852, Brunel's mind was much occupied with the idea that, to make long voyages economically and speedily by steam, vessels must be made large enough to carry coal for the entire voyage outwards, and in the case of the outpost being ill supplied with fuel, for the return voyage also. With this idea originated that of the Great Eastern. And with the completion of this "Leviathan" of steam ships closed the career of Brunel. He died on the 14th September, 1859, having been carried home a few days before from the deck of the Great Eastern—the scene of anxieties greater than his impaired health could bear, and, it need not be added, of a triumph that links his name with the progress of British enterprise in arts and commerce.—J. S., G.
BRUNELLESCHI, Filippo, sculptor and architect, whose name is inscribed by Florence in the roll of her greatest men. In the age of Brunelleschi, Gothic architecture had almost supreme sway; but in his mind the living genius of Greece again found a dwelling-place, and his works were rather fresh creations of the ancient spirit, than servile imitations of its external forms. He was born at Florence in 1377. His father, a man of some note, wished him to be either a notary or a physician; but, yielding to his son's delight in ingenious questions of mechanism and art, he placed him at last in the guild of goldsmiths—in an age when working in gold was an independent art, and not the mere servant of fashion. Brunelleschi soon distinguished himself by the elegance of his works in the precious metals, and the curious ingenuity of his mechanical contrivances. Adopting architecture rather than sculptor as his profession, he journeyed to Rome, and studied so minutely the mechanism and the grace of its stately ruins, that he was said to be capable of reconstructing the city in his imagination, and of discerning Rome as she had been before her desolation. A great and worthy ambition gave deeper intensity to his studies, Amolpho di Lappo had left unfinished his great work—the church of Santa Maria del Fiore at Florence; and a conference of architects and engineers was held to consult upon its completion. The four branches of the cross forming the church were finished; but it was necessary to unite them by means of a cupola. The supports of the cupola formed an octagon of large diameter; and there were great difficulties involved in its adaptation to that form, on the immense scale required by the proportions of the church. His studies at Rome, particularly of the temple of Minerva Medica, came to his aid, and he proposed that there should be a double cupola, turned in the manner of the pointed arch, the one vaulting within and the other without, in such sort that a passage should be formed between the two; the form of the pointed arch adjusting itself to the walls of the base, and rapidly ascending to a magnificent height, while a lantern, crowning the whole, would help each part to give stability to the other. Nothing similar had been attempted before, and the proposal was received with derision. But by the construction of models, Brunelleschi proved that the laws of nature were on his side; and he was finally commissioned to execute the work, the successful completion of which constitutes an epoch in architectural history. Brunelleschi, however, laboured under the imputation of attempting an impossible task. Unfortunately he died before his great task was finally completed, and his successors did not accurately carry out his instructions with respect to the lantern of the dome, giving it proportions which contrast disagreeably with the rest of the building, while they omitted one part of a gallery he designed.—Brunelleschi erected many other buildings—amongst others, the churches of San Lorenzo and of the Holy Spirit at Florence; the abbey of the canons regular at Fiesole; an arch in the sacristy of the canons at Duomo; the chapter-house of Santa Croce for the Florentine family of the Pazzi; with the front elevation of the palace of the Pitti, and several smaller palaces. He revived the use of antique cornices, and restored the various ancient orders of architecture to their primitive forms. In his works there is uniformly the grandeur of a noble simplicity, although, perhaps, one finds less harmony in the details than in the masses, and more of general vigour than of minutely delicate elaboration. He died in 1446.—L. L. P.
BRUNFELS, Otto, a German physician and botanist, was born about the year 1464, in the neighbourhood of Mayence, and died at Berne on 23d November, 1534.—J. H. B.
BRUNI, Leonardo. See Aretino.
BRUNO, founder of the order of Carthusians, born at Cologne about the year 1030, was descended from an ancient and honourable family. Educated at Paris, and then at Rheims, he had earned such a reputation for learning and piety in the course of his academical career, that, about the time when he should have quitted the latter university, he was raised to the office of scholasticus, or director of studies in all the great schools of the diocese. This situation he filled with great credit for a number of years. In 1077 he formed the resolution of retiring to a place of solitude, and accompanied by six clerks of the church at Rheims, repaired first to Saisse Fontaine in the diocese of Langres, and then to the desert of Chartreuse in the diocese of Grenoble. Here in 1084 he founded his celebrated order. Each of his companions had a separate cell, in which, practising the austerities of the rule of St. Benedict, they passed six days of the week in unbroken silence, assembling only on Sundays. He had passed six years in this solitude when Urban II., who had been his pupil, summoned him to Rome. The pope received him with every mark of respect and confidence, and pressed him to accept the bishopric of Reggio. Refusing that dignity, he asked permission to retire into the district of Calabria, where, having founded a second Carthusian house named La Torre, he died in 1101. He was interred in the church of the monastery. Leo X. canonized him in 1514.—J. S., G.
BRUNO, Giordano, born at Nola in the kingdom of Naples, about the middle of the sixteenth century—the precise date of his birth cannot be ascertained—called also il Nolano from the name of his native place. The events of his early life are enveloped in obscurity. Attracted, when yet a boy, by the love of study to what was then considered the most suitable refuge for such a calling—namely, the monastic solitude—he entered a Dominican convent in his native land. But no sooner had he drunk at the sources of Hellenic poetry and philosophy, than he felt the incompatibility of his classical aspirations with the monkish life. Forswearing, therefore, his vows, he left the cell of the friar to wander, as a knight-errant of philosophy, on the highways of the world. He went first to Geneva when still very young—perhaps at the age of twenty-five—in 1580; but Calvinism seemed to offer no better welcome to his opinions, or satisfaction to his intellectual wants, than Romanism had done. Thus, after a sojourn of two years at Geneva, we find him in Paris, then in England, subsequently in Germany, challenging everywhere the Peripatetics, teaching, delivering lectures, disputing with masters of arts and supercilious rectors of universities, and publishing philosophical books in Latin and Italian, in prose and verse, with the main object in view of showing the fallacies of the current philosophy.
Bruno was possessed, for the furtherance of his task, of a staunch consciousness of the truths which had flashed on his mental insight, of a large amount of original learning derived
