was unusually strict; Fredrika’s health began to give way; and in 1821 the family set out for the south of France. They travelled slowly by way of Germany and Switzerland, and returned by Paris and the Netherlands. It was shortly after this time that Miss Bremer became acquainted with Schiller’s works, which made a very deep impression on her. She had begun to write verses from the age of eight, and in 1828 she succeeded in finding a publisher for the first volume of her Teckningar ur hvardagslifvet (1828), which at once attracted attention. The second volume (1831), containing one of her best tales, Familjen H., gave decisive evidence that a real novelist had been found in Sweden. The Swedish Academy awarded her their smaller gold medal, and she increased her reputation by Presidentens döttrar (1834), Grannarne (1837) and others. Her father had died in 1830, and her life was thereafter regulated in accordance with her own wishes and tastes. She lived for some years in Norway with a friend, after whose death she travelled in the autumn of 1849 to America, and after spending nearly two years there returned through England. The admirable translations (1846, &c.) of her works by Mary Howitt, which had been received with even greater eagerness in America and England than in Sweden, secured for her a warm and kindly reception. Her impressions of America, Hemmen i nya verlden, were published in 1853–1854, and at once translated into English. After her return Miss Bremer devoted herself to her scheme for the advancement and emancipation of women. Her views on these questions were expounded in her later novels—Hertha (1856) and Far och dotter (1858). Miss Bremer organized a society of ladies in Stockholm for the purpose of visiting the prisons, and during the cholera started a society, the object of which was the care of children left orphans by the epidemic. She devoted herself to other philanthropic and social schemes, and gradually abandoned her earlier simple and charming type of story for novels directed to the furtherance of her views. In these she was less successful. In 1856 she again travelled, and spent five years on the continent and in Palestine. Her reminiscences of these countries have all been translated into English. On her return she settled at Årsta, where, with the exception of a visit to Germany, she spent the remaining years of her life. She died on the 31st of December 1865.
See Life, Letters and Posthumous Works of F. Bremer, by her sister, Charlotte Bremer, translated by F. Milow, London, 1868. A selection of her works in 6 vols. appeared at Örebro, 1868–1872.
BREMERHAVEN, a seaport town of Germany, in the free state of Bremen, on the right bank and estuary of the Weser, at the confluence of the Geeste, 38 m. N. of the city of Bremen by rail. Pop. (1895) 18,366; (1905) 24,159. It is built on a tract of territory ceded to Bremen by Hanover in 1826, and further increased by treaty with Prussia in 1869. It forms practically a single town with Geestemünde (Prussia), which lies across the Geeste and with which it is connected by a drawbridge. The port was opened in 1830, and besides an excellent harbour, there are three large wet docks, including the Kaiserhafen, enlarged in 1897–1899 at a cost of £900,000. This, together with the north portion of the Neuerhafen, constitutes the free harbour. Here are the workshops and dry docks of the North German Lloyd steamship company. The whole internal harbour system is furnished with powerful hydraulic cranes and lines of railway running alongside the quays. The entrance to the port is free from ice nearly all the year round, is excellently buoyed, and lighted by two lightships and eight lighthouses, among the latter the remarkable Rothesand Leuchtturm, erected 1884–1885. The Hanoverian fort and batteries, which formerly protected the town, have been removed, and their place is supplied by four modern forts, with revolving turtleback turrets, lower down. The town possesses two Protestant and a Roman Catholic church, a technical institute, a natural history museum, a library, a theatre, a monument to the emperor William I. and one to Johann Smidt (1773–1859), the burgomaster of Bremen to whose enterprise the harbour of Bremerhaven is due. Shipbuilding and kindred industries are carried on.
BRENDAN, Brandon, or Brandan (c. 484–578), Irish saint and hero of a legendary voyage in the Atlantic, is said to have been born at Tralee in Kerry in A.D. 484. The Irish form of his name is Brennain, the Latin Brendanus. Medieval historians usually call him Brendan of Clonfert, or Brendan son of Finnloga, to distinguish him from his contemporary, St Brendan of Birr (573). Little is known of the historical Brendan, who died in 578 as abbot of a Benedictine monastery which he had founded twenty years previously at Clonfert in eastern Galway. The story of his voyage across the Atlantic to the “Promised Land of the Saints,” afterwards designated “St Brendan’s Island,” ranks among the most celebrated of the medieval sagas of western Europe. Its traditional date is 565–573. The legend is found, in prose or verse and with many variations, in Latin, French, English, Saxon, Flemish, Irish, Welsh, Breton and Scottish Gaelic. Although it does not occur in the writings of any Arabian geographer, several of its incidents—such as the landing on a whale in mistake for an island—belong also to Arabic folk-literature. Many of Brendan’s fabulous adventures seem to be borrowed from the half-pagan Irish saga of Maelduin or Maeldune, and others belong also to Scandinavian mythology. The oldest extant version of the legend is the 11th century Navigatio Brendani.
St Brendan’s island was long accepted as a reality by geographers. In a Venetian map dated 1367, in the anonymous Weimar map of 1424, and in B. Beccario’s map of 1435, it is identified with Madeira. Columbus, in his journal for the 9th of August 1492, states that the inhabitants of Hierro, Gomera and Madeira had seen the island in the west; and Martin Behaim, in the globe he made at Nuremberg in the same year, places it west of the Canaries and near the equator. During the 16th century the progress of exploration in these latitudes compelled many cartographers to locate the island elsewhere; and it was marked about 100 m. west of Ireland, or afterwards among the West Indies. But in Spain and Portugal the older belief as to its situation was maintained. In 1526 an expedition under Fernando Alvarez left Grand Canary in search of St Brendan’s island, which had again been reported as seen by many trustworthy witnesses. In 1570 an official inquiry was held, and a second expedition undertaken, by Fernando de Villalobos, governor of Palma. Similar voyages of discovery were made by the Canarians in 1604 and 1721; and only in 1759 was the apparition of St Brendan’s island explained as an effect of mirage.
Among the numerous books which deal with the legend, the following are important: Die altfranzösische Prosaübersetzung von Brendans Meerfahrt, by C. Wahlund (Upsala, 1900); La “Navigatio Sancti Brendani” in antico Veneziano, by F. Novati (Bergamo, 1892); Zur Brendanus-Legende, &c., by G. Schirmer (Leipzig, 1888); Les Voyages merveilleux de St. Brendan, &c., by F. Michel (Paris, 1878); and Acta Sancti Brendani . . . . Original Latin Documents connected with the Life of St Brendan, by P. F. Moran (Dublin, 1872).
BRENHAM, a city and the county-seat of Washington county, Texas, U.S.A., situated in the S.E. part of the state, about 68 m. N.W. of Houston. Pop. (1890) 5209; (1900) 5968, including 2701 negroes and 531 foreign-born; (1910) 4718. Brenham is served by the Gulf, Colorado & Santa Fé (controlled by the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fé) and the Houston & Texas Central railways. It is the seat of Blinn Memorial College (German Methodist Episcopal), opened as “Mission Institute” in 1883, and renamed in 1889 in honour of the Rev. Christian Blinn, of New York, a liberal benefactor; of Brenham Evangelical Lutheran College, and of a German-American institute (1898). The municipality owns and operates the waterworks. The city is situated in an agricultural and cotton-raising region, and has cotton compresses and gins, cotton mills, cotton-seed oil refineries, foundries and machine shops, and furniture and wagon factories. Brenham was settled about 1844, was incorporated in 1866, and was chartered as a city in 1873.
BRENNER PASS, the lowest (4495 ft.) and one of the most frequented passes across the Alps in all ages, though the name itself rarely occurs in the middle ages, the route over it being said to lie through “the valley of Trent.” It may be described as the great gate of Italy, and by it most of the Teutonic tribes made their way to Italy. One reason of its importance is that
