active trade with that country and with the whole of the Balkan states. Its chief industries are iron and copper works, wool-spinning, turkey-red dyeing, leather goods, paper, cement and petroleum refineries. The timber industry in all its branches, with a speciality for the manufacture of the wooden bottles largely used by the peasantry in Hungary and in the Balkan states, as well as the dairy industry, and ham-curing are also fully developed. A peculiarity of Brassó, which constitutes a survival of the old methods of trade with the Balkan states, is the number of money-changers who ply their trade at small movable tables in the market-place and in the open street. Brassó is the most populous town of Transylvania, and its population is composed in about equal numbers of Germans, Magyars and Rumanians. The town, especially on market days, presents an animated and picturesque aspect. Here are seen Germans, Szeklers, Magyars, Rumanians, Armenians and Gipsies, each of them wearing their distinctive national costume, and talking and bargaining in their own special idiom.
Amongst the places of interest round Brassó is the watering-place Zaizon, 15 m. to the east, with ferruginous and iodine waters; while about 17 m. to the south-west lies the pretty Rumanian village of Zernest, where in 1690 the Austrian general Heussler was defeated and taken prisoner by Imre (Emerich) Tököly, the usurper of the Transylvanian throne.
Brassó was founded by the Teutonic Order in 1211, and soon became a flourishing town. Through the activity of Honterus it played a leading part in the introduction of the Reformation in Transylvania in the 16th century. The town was almost completely destroyed by the big fire of 1689. During the revolution of 1848–1849 it was besieged by the Hungarians under General Bern from March to July 1849, and several engagements between the Austrian and the Hungarian troops took place in its neighbourhood.
BRATHWAIT, RICHARD (1588–1673), English poet, son of Thomas Brathwait, was born in 1588 at his father’s manor of Burneshead, near Kendal, Westmorland. He entered Oriel College, Oxford, in 1604, and remained there for some years, pursuing the study of poetry and Roman history. He removed to Cambridge to study law and afterwards to London to the Inns of Court. Thomas Brathwait died in 1610, and the son went down to live on the estate he inherited from his father. In 1617 he married Frances Lawson of Nesham, near Darlington. On the death of his elder brother, Sir Thomas Brathwait, in 1618, Richard became the head of the family, and an important personage in the county, being deputy-lieutenant and justice of the peace. In 1633 his wife died, and in 1639 he married again. His only son by this second marriage, Sir Stafford Brathwait, was killed in a sea-fight against the Algerian pirates. Richard Brathwait’s most famous work is Barnabae Itinerarium or Barnabees Journall [1638], by “Corymbaeus,” written in English and Latin rhyme. The title-page says it is written for the “travellers’ solace” and is to be chanted to the old tune of “Barnabe.” The story of “drunken Barnabee’s” four journeys to the north of England contains much amusing topographical information, and its gaiety is unflagging. Barnabee rarely visits a town or village without some notice of an excellent inn or a charming hostess, but he hardly deserves the epithet “drunken.” At Banbury he saw the Puritan who has become proverbial,
| “Hanging of his cat on Monday |
Brathwait’s identity with “Corymbaeus” was first established by Joseph Haslewood. In his later years he removed to Catterick, where he died on the 4th of May 1673. Among his other works are: The Golden Fleece (1611), with a second title-page announcing “sonnets and madrigals,” and a treatise on the Art of Poesy, which is not preserved; The Poets Willow; or the Passionate Shepheard (1614); The Prodigals Teares (1614); The Schollers Medley, or an intermixt Discourse upon Historicall and Poeticall relations (1614), known in later editions as a Survey of History (1638, &c.); a collection of epigrams and satires entitled A Strappado for the Divell (1615), with which was published incongruously Loves Labyrinth (edited, 1878, by J. W. Ebsworth); Natures Embassie; or, the wildemans measures; danced naked by twelve satyres (1621), thirty satires finding antique parallels for modern vices; with these are bound up The Shepheards Tales (1621), a collection of pastorals, one section of which was reprinted by Sir Egerton Brydges in 1815; two treatises on manners, The English Gentleman (1630) and The English Gentlewoman (1631); Anniversaries upon his Panarete (1634), a poem in memory of his wife; Essaies upon the Five Senses (1620); The Psalmes of David ... and other holy Prophets, paraphras’d in English (1638); A Comment upon Two Tales of ... Jeffray Chaucer (1665; edited for the Chaucer Soc. by C. Spurgeon, 1901). Thomas Hearne, on whose testimony (MS. collections for the year 1713, vol. 47, p. 127) the authorship of the Itinerarium chiefly rests, not inappropriately called him “the scribler of those times,” and the list just given of his works, published under various pseudonyms, is by no means complete.
A full bibliography is given in Joseph Haslewood’s edition of Barnabee’s Journall (ed. W. C. Hazlitt, 1876). See also J. Corser, Collectanea (Chetham Soc., 1860, &c.).
BRATIANU (or Bratiano), ION C. (1821–1891), Rumanian statesman, was born at Pitesci in Walachia on the 2nd of June 1821. He entered the Walachian army in 1838, and visited Paris in 1841 for purposes of study. Returning to Walachia, he took part, with his friend C. A. Rosetti and other prominent politicians, in the Rumanian rebellion of 1848, and acted as prefect of police in the provisional government formed in that year. The restoration of Russian and Turkish authority shortly afterwards drove him into exile. He took refuge in Paris, and endeavoured to influence French opinion in favour of the proposed union and autonomy of the Danubian principalities. In 1854, however, he was sentenced to a fine of £120 and three months’ imprisonment for sedition, and later confined in a lunatic asylum; but in 1856 he returned home with his brother, Dimitrie Bratianu, afterwards one of his foremost political opponents. During the reign of Prince Cuza (1859–1866), Bratianu figured prominently as one of the Liberal leaders. He assisted in 1866 in the deposition of Cuza and the election of Prince Charles of Hohenzollern, under whom he held several ministerial appointments during the next four years. He was arrested for complicity in the revolution of 1870, but soon released. In 1876, aided by C. A. Rosetti, he formed a Liberal cabinet, which remained in power until 1888. For an account of his work in connexion with the Russo-Turkish War of 1877, the Berlin congress, the establishment of the Rumanian kingdom, the revision of the constitution, and other reforms, see Rumania. After 1883 Bratianu acted as sole leader of the Liberals, owing to a quarrel with C. A. Rosetti, his friend and political ally for nearly forty years. His long tenure of office, without parallel in Rumanian history, rendered Bratianu extremely unpopular, and at its close his impeachment appeared inevitable. But any proceedings taken against the minister would have involved charges against the king, who was largely responsible for his policy; and the impeachment was averted by a vote of parliament in February 1890. Bratianu died on the 16th of May 1891. Besides being the leading statesman of Rumania during the critical years 1876–1888, he attained some eminence as a writer. His French political pamphlets, Mémoire sur l’empire d’Autriche dans la question d’Orient (1855), Réflexions sur la situation (1856), Mémoire sur la situation de la Moldavie depuis le traité de Paris (1857), and La Question religieuse en Roumanie (1866), were all published in Paris.
For his other writings and speeches see Din Scrierile şi cuvîntarile lui I. C. Bratianu, 1821–1891 (Bucharest, 1903, &c.), edited with a biographical introduction by D. A. Sturza. A brief anonymous biography, Ion C. Bratianu, appeared at Bucharest in 1893.
BRATLANDSDAL (i.e. Bratland valley), a gorge of southern Norway in Stavanger amt (county), formed by the Bratland river, a powerful torrent issuing into Lake Suldal. A remarkable road traverses the gorge by means of cuttings and a tunnel, and the scenery is among the most magnificent in Norway. It is usually approached from Stavanger by way of Sand and Lake Suldal, and the road divides above the gorge, branches running north to Odde and south-east through Telemarken. The
