BROUGHTON, JOHN CAM HOBHOUSE, Baron (1786-1869), English writer and politician, was the eldest son of Sir Benjamin Hobhouse, Bart., by his wife Charlotte, daughter of Samuel Cam of Chantry House, Bradford, Wiltshire. Born at Bristol on the 27th of June 1786, he was educated at Westminster school and Trinity College, Cambridge, where he graduated in 1808. He took the Hulsean prize in 1808 for his Essay on the Origin and Intention of Sacrifices. At Cambridge he founded the "Whig Club," and the "Amicable Society," and became very intimate with Byron, who accompanied him on a tour in Spain, Greece and Turkey in 1809. Hobhouse was present at the battle of Dresden in August 1813, and, following the allied army into France, saw Louis XVIII. enter Paris in May 1814. He was again in Paris after the return of Napoleon from Elba, and showed his dislike of the Bourbons and his sympathy with
Bonaparte by writing in 1816 a pamphlet entitled The substance of some letters written by an Englishman resident in Paris during the last reign of the emperor Napoleon. This caused some offence in England and more in France, and the French translation was seized by the government and both translator and printer were imprisoned. A further period of travel with Byron followed, and at this time Hobhouse wrote some notes to the fourth canto of Childe Harold. This canto was afterwards dedicated to him, and a revised edition of a part of his notes entitled Historical illustrations of the fourth canto of "Childe Harold" containing dissertations on the ruins of Rome and an essay on Italian literature, was published in 1818. In February 1819 Hobhouse was the Radical candidate at a by-election for the representation of the city of Westminster, but he failed to secure election. He had already gained some popularity by writing in favour of reform, and in 1819 he issued A defence of the People in reply to Lord Erskine's "Two Defences of the Whigs," followed by A trifling mistake in Thomas, Lord Erskine's recent preface. The House of Commons declared this latter pamphlet a breach of privilege; its author was arrested on the 14th of December 1819, and in spite of an appeal to the court of king's bench he remained in custody until the end of the following February. But this proceeding only increased his popularity, and at the general election of 1820 he was returned for Westminster. Hobhouse shared Byron's enthusiasm for the liberation of Greece; after the poet's death in 1824 he proved his will, and superintended the arrangements for his funeral. In parliament he proved a valuable recruit to the party of reform; and having succeeded his father as 2nd baronet in 1831, was appointed secretary at war in the ministry of Earl Grey in February 1832, and was made a privy councillor. He effected some reforms and economies during his tenure of this office, but, unable to carry out all his wishes, became chief secretary for Ireland in March 1833. He had only held this post for a few weeks when, in consequence of his refusal to vote with the government against the abolition of the house and window tax, he resigned both his office and his seat in parliament. At the subsequent election he was defeated, but joined the cabinet as first commissioner of woods and forests when Lord Melbourne took office in July 1834, and about the same time was returned at a by-election as one of the members for Nottingham. In Melbourne's government of 1835 he was president of the board of control, in which position he strongly supported the Indian policy of Lord Auckland; he returned to the same office in July 1846 as a member of Lord John Russell's cabinet; and in February 1851 he went to the House of Lords as Baron Broughton of Broughton Gyfford. He left office when Russell resigned in February 1852, and took little part in political life, being mainly occupied in literary pursuits and in correspondence. He died in London on the 3rd of June 1869.
He had married in July 1828 Lady Julia Tomlinson Hay, daughter of George, 7th marquess of Tweeddale, by whom he had three daughters, but being without heir male the barony lapsed on his death, the baronetcy passing to his nephew, Charles Parry Hobhouse. Lord Broughton was a partner in Whitbread's brewery, a fellow of the Royal Society, and one of the founders of the Royal Geographical Society. He was responsible for the passing of the Vestry Act of 1831, and is said to have first used the phrase "his majesty's opposition." He was a good classical scholar, and although not eloquent, an able debater. In addition to the works already enumerated he wrote A journey through Albania and other provinces of Turkey in Europe and Asia to Constantinople during the years 1809 and 1810 (London, 1813), revised edition (London, 1855); and Italy: Remarks made in Several Visits from the Year 1816 to 1854 (London, 1859). A collection of his diaries, correspondence and memoranda is in the British Museum.
See T. Moore, Life of Lord Byron (London, 1837-1840); Greville Memoirs (London, 1896); Dictionary of National Biography, vol. xxvii. (London, 1891); The Times, June 4, 1869; Spencer Walpole, History of England (London, 1890). Broughton also wrote Recollections of a Long Life, printed privately in 1865, and in 1909 published with additions in 2 vols. edited by his daughter, Lady Dorchester, with a preface by the earl of Rosebery.
BROUGHTY FERRY, a municipal and police burgh, seaport and watering-place of Forfarshire, Scotland, on the Firth of Tay, 4 m. E. of Dundee by the North British railway. Pop. (1901) 10,484. The name is a corruption of Brugh or Burgh Tay, in allusion to the fortress standing on the rock that juts into the Firth. It is believed that a stronghold has occupied this site since Pictish times. The later castle, built in 1498, fell into the hands of the English in 1547 and was held by them for three years. Gradually growing more or less ruinous it was acquired by government in 1855, repaired, strengthened and converted into a Tay defence, mounting several heavy guns. Owing to its healthy and convenient situation, Broughty Ferry has become a favourite residence of Dundee merchants. Fishery and shipping are carried on to a limited extent. Before the erection of the Tay Bridge the town was the scene of much traffic, as the railway ferry from Tayport was then the customary access to Dundee from the south. Monifieth (pop. 2134), 2¼ m. north-east of Broughty Ferry, with a station on the North British railway, is noted for its golf links. About 2 m. north rises the conical hill of Laws (400 ft. high), on the top of which are the remains of a vitrified fort, 390 ft. long by 198 ft. in breadth.
BROUSSAIS, FRANÇOIS JOSEPH VICTOR (1772-1838), French physician, was born at St Malo on the 17th of December 1772. From his father, who was also a physician, he received his first instructions in medicine, and he studied for some years at the college of Dinan. At the age of seventeen he entered one of the newly-formed republican regiments, but ill-health compelled him to withdraw after two years. He resumed his medical studies, and then obtained an appointment as surgeon in the navy. In 1799 he proceeded to Paris, wherein 1803 he graduated as M.D. In 1805 he again joined the army in a professional capacity, and served in Germany and Holland. Returning to Paris in 1808 he published his Histoire des phlegmasies ou inflammations chroniques; then left again for active service in Spain. In 1814 he returned to Paris, and was appointed assistant-professor to the military hospital of the Val-de-Grace, where he first promulgated his peculiar doctrines on the relation between "life" and "stimulus," and on the physiological interdependence and sympathies of the various organs. His lectures were attended by great numbers of students, who received with the utmost enthusiasm the new theories which he propounded. In 1816 he published his Examen de la doctrine médicale généralement adoptée, which drew down upon its author the hatred of the whole medical faculty of Paris; but by degrees his doctrines triumphed, and in 1831 he was appointed professor of general pathology in the academy of medicine. In 1828 he published a work De l'irritation et de la folie, and towards the end of his life he attracted large audiences by his lectures on phrenology. He died at Vitry-sur-Seine on the 17th of November 1838.
BROUSSONET, PIERRE MARIE AUGUSTE (1761-1807), French naturalist, was born at Montpellier on the 28th of February 1761, and was educated for the medical profession. Visiting England, he was admitted in 1872 an honorary member of the Royal Society, and in the same year published at London the first part of his work on fishes, Ichthyologiae Decas I, material for which was communicated to him by Sir Joseph Banks. On his return to Paris he was appointed perpetual secretary to the Society of Agriculture, and in 1789 became a member of the National Assembly. Under the convention he had to leave Paris, and after some dangers he made his way to Madrid. The enmity of the French emigrants, however, drove him from Spain, and afterwards from Lisbon, but at last he found a refuge in Morocco as physician to an embassy sent out by the United States. Later he obtained permission from the Directory to return to France, and in 1805 was appointed professor of botany at Montpellier, where he died on the 17th of January 1807.
BROUWER, or Brauwer, ADRIAN (1608-1640), Dutch painter, was born at Haarlem, of very humble parents, who bound him apprentice to the painter Frans Hals. Brouwer had an admirable eye for colour, and much spirit in design; and these gifts his master appears to have turned to his own profit, while his pupil was half starved. As the result of this ungenerous
treatment, Brouwer was frequently brought into low company and dissipated scenes, which he delineated with great spirit and vivid colouring in his pictures. The unfortunate artist died in a hospital at Antwerp at the early age of thirty-two, consequently his works are few and rarely met with. The largest collection of his masterpieces is in the Pinakothek at Munich.
BROWN, CHARLES BROCKDEN (1771-1810), American novelist, was born of Quaker parents in Philadelphia, on the 17th of January 1771. Of delicate constitution and retiring habits, he early devoted himself to study; his principal amusement was the invention of ideal architectural designs, devised on the most extensive and elaborate scale. This characteristic talent for construction subsequently assumed the shape of Utopian projects for perfect commonwealths, and at a later period of a series of novels distinguished by the ingenuity and consistent evolution of the plot. The transition between these intellectual phases is marked by a juvenile romance entitled Carsol, not published until after the author's death, which professes to depict an imaginary community, and shows how thoroughly the young American was inspired by Godwin and Mary Wollstonecraft, whose principal writings had recently made their appearance. From the latter he derived the idea of his next work, The Dialogue of Alcuin (1797), an enthusiastic but inexperienced essay on the question of woman's rights and liberties. From Godwin he learned his terse style, condensed to a fault, but too laconic for eloquence or modulation, and the art of developing a plot from a single psychological problem or mysterious circumstance. The novels which he now rapidly produced offer the strongest affinity to Caleb Williams, and if inferior to that remarkable work in subtlety of mental analysis, greatly surpass it in affluence of invention and intensity of poetical feeling. All are wild and weird in conception, with incidents bordering on the preternatural, yet the limit of possibility is never transgressed. In Wieland; or the Transformation (1798), the first and most striking, a seemingly inexplicable mystery is resolved into a case of ventriloquism. Arthur Mervyn; or Memoirs of the Year 1793 (1798-1800), is remarkable for the description of the epidemic of yellow fever in Philadelphia. Edgar Huntly (Philadelphia, 1801), a romance rich in local colouring, is remarkable for the effective use made of somnambulism, and anticipates Cooper's introduction of the American Indian into fiction. Ormond (1799) is less powerful, but contains one character, Constantia Dudley, which excited the enthusiastic admiration of Shelley. Two subsequent novels, Clara Howard (1801) and Jane Talbot (1804), dealing with ordinary life, proved failures, and Brown betook himself to compiling a general system of geography, editing a periodical, and an annual register, and writing political pamphlets. He died of consumption on the 22nd of February 1810. He is depicted by his biographer as the purest and most amiable of men, and in spite of a certain formality, due perhaps to his Quaker education, the statement is borne out by his correspondence.