BRIANCONNOIS, a ci-devant territory of France, in Dauphiné, which was bounded by Grenoblois, Gapençois, Embrunois, Piedmont, and Savoy. It comprehends several valleys, which lie among the mountains of the Alps: and though it is extremely cold, yet it is fertile in corn and pastures. Briançon is the capital town. Manna is gathered near it, on the leaves and branches of a species of pine; incisions. in it yield large quantities. The chief road from France to Italy passes through it. It is now comprehended in the department of the Upper Alps. BRIAREUS, in fabulous history, a giant, the son of Ether, Titan, or Cœlus and Terra. This was his name in heaven; on earth he was called Egeon. He was of singular service to Jupiter, when Juno, Pallas, Neptune, and the rest of the gods, endeavoured to bind him in chains and dethrone him. Afterwards, however, he conspired with the rest of his gigantic brethren to dethrone Jupiter. Virgil, on this occasion, describes him as having 100 hands, fifty heads, and breathing out fire. The fable says, that Jupiter, to punish him, threw him under mount Etna, which, as often as he moves, belches out fire. BRIBE', v. & n. Goth. bry fe; Sax. bred Who saveth a thefe when the rope is knet, Id. Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. And, for ther n'is no thefe without a louke, That helpeth him to wasten, and to souke, Of that he briben can or borwe moy, You have condemned and noted Lucius Pella, For taking bribes here of the Sardians. Shakspeare. There was a law made by the Romans, against the bribery and extortion of the governors of provinces: before, says Cicero, the governours did bribe and extort as much as was sufficient for themselves; but now they bribe and extort as much as may be enough not only for themselves, but for judges, jurors, and magistrates. Bacon. No bribery of courts, or cabals of factions, or advantages of fortune, can remove him from the solid foundations of honor and fidelity. Id. How powerful are chaste vows! the wind and tide You bribed to combat on the English side. Id. The secret pleasure of a generous act, Is the great mind's great bribe. Id. Don Sebastian. Affection is still a briber of the judgment; and it is hard for a man to admit a reason against the thing he loves; or to confess the force of an argument against an interest. South The great, 'tis true, can still the' electing tribe; The bard may supplicate, but cannot bribe. . Prologue to Good-natured Man. The kingdom's farm he lets to them bids least, (Greater the bribe) and cheats at interest. Marvell, BRIBE anciently imported as much as panis mendicatus, which still keeps up the idea of the matter whereof bribes anciently consisted. Hence also the Spaniards use bribar and brivar for begging; and brivia, brivoneria and brivonissimo, for beggary. In authors of the middle age, a bribe given a judge is called quato litis, and the receiver, campi particeps, or cambi particeps; because the spoils of the field, i. e. the profits of the cause, were thus shared with the giver. BRIBERY, in law, is a high offence, where a person in a judicial place takes any fee, gift, reward, or brokage, for doing his office, but of the king only. It signifies also the receiving or concerned in the administration of public justice, offering any undue reward to or by any person whether judge, officer, &c. to act contrary to his giving a reward for a public office.--In the east duty; and sometimes it signifies the taking or it is the custom never to petition any superior for justice, not excepting their kings, without a present. The Roman law, though it contained many severe injunctions against bribery, as well for selling a man's vote in the senate or other public assembly, as for the bettering of common justice; yet, by a strange indulgence, it tacitly encouraged this practice, in one case; allowing magistrates to receive small presents, provided they did not on the whole exceed 100 crowns a-year; not considering the insinuating nature and gigantic progress of this vice, when once admitted. Plato, therefore, in his ideal republic, orders those who take presents for doing their duty to be punished in the severest manner; and by the laws of Athens, he that offered a bribe was also prosecuted, as well as he that received a bribe. In England this offence is punished, in inferior officers, with fine and imprisonment; and in those that offer a bribe, though not taken, the same. But in judges, especially the superior ones, it has always been looked upon as so heinous an offence, that the chief justice Thorpe was hanged for it in the reign of Edward III. By a statute, 11 Henry IV. all judges and officers of the king, convicted of bribery, shall forfeit treble the bribe, be punished at the king's will, and be discharged from his service for ever. And some notable examples have been made in parliament, of persons in the highest stations, and otherwise very eminent and able, but contaminated with this sordid vice. BRIBERY IN ELECTIONS. See ELECTIONS. BRICIANI, a military order, instituted by St. Bridget, queen of Sweden, who gave them the constitutions of those of Malta and St. Augustine. It was approved by Pope Urban V. The Briciani were to fight for the burying of the dead, to relieve and assist widows, orphans, the lame, sick, &c. BRICK,n.s. & v. a.) BRICK ED, adj. BRICK BAT, n. s. BRICK CLAY, BRICK DUST, BRICK EARTH, BRICK KILN, 'Brick is a mass of arBRICK LAYER, gillaceous earth, someBRICK MAKER, times mixed with coal ashes, chalk, and other substances, formed in cubical moulds, dried in the sun, and baked into Fr. brique; Armoric brick; Ital. bruchio; terra abruchian, from Goth. and Swed. braka, brasa; Ital. bruggio, to burn. A piece of burnt clay. a kind of artificial stone for the use of builders :' to brick is to work, build, or fortify with bricks: A stately pallace built of squared bricks. Spenser. Time enough to have been interpreter For whatsoever doth so alter a body, as it returneth not again to that it was, may be called alteratio major; as coals made of wood, or bricks of earth. Id. They generally gain enough by the rubbish and bricks, which the present architects value much be yond those of a modern make, to defray the charges of their search. Addison. BRICK, a fat reddish earth, formed into long squares, four inches broad, and eight or nine long, by a wooden mould, and then baked or burnt in a kiln, to serve the purposes of building. Bricks are commonly red, though there are some of a white color. human associations. It appears by the Sacred BRICKS clearly existed in the very origin of Writings that the tower of Babel was attempted to be raised with them. They seem to have been in common use while the Israelites were in Egypt, for their oppressive task was the making dus we are informed that the Israelites built two of brick without straw; and in the book of ExoEgyptian cities. Straw was clearly then one of the ingredients of these as of modern bricks, and as rain is almost unknown in Egypt, it is proba sun, a mode of making them still practised in the ble that their bricks were merely baked in the East, where exist the ruins of a considerable tower near Bagdad, which some have considered as the tower in Babylon, described by Herodotus, (lib. i. c. 181.), formed wholly of this material. Shaks. The Greeks chiefly used three kinds of bricks; the first whereof was called dicopov, i. e. of two palms or six inches; the second Terpacopov, of four palms, or twelve inches long; the third TEVTadopov, of five palms, or fifteen inches. They had also bricks, just half the size of these, to render their brick-work more solid, and also more agreeable to the eye. The bricks chiefly used by the Romans, according to Pliny, were a foot and a half long, and a foot broad; which measures nearly agree with those of several Roman bricks in England. That they excelled in the art of brick-making is clear, several of their structures of this material, as Trajan's pillar for instance, having come down to us unimpaired almost during the lapse of near 2000 years. Pliny mentions a kind of brick used by the ancients, so light as to swim in water. Pitanæ in Asia, et in ulterioris Hispaniæ civitatibus Maxilua et Calento, fiunt Lateres, qui ciccati non merguntur in aqua.' (Plinii Natur. Histor. lib. XXXV. c. 14). He does not state the part of the world in which they were manufactured, but only that the material employed was a kind of pumice stone. Until the year 1791 this was unintelligible to the modern world; then M. Fabroni found a substance at Castel del Piano, not far from Santa Fiora (between Tuscany and the Papal dominions), which formed bricks capable of being floated on water. It is a white earthy matter, which constitutes a bed in that place, and was known in Italy by the name of Latte di Luna. In recent mineralogical works it is distinguished as the farina fossilis (bergmehl) Hauy considers it as a variety of talc, and Brochant, as a variety of meerschaum. According to the analysis of Klaproth, it contains, Bacon. And hence like Pharaoh that Israel pressed Marvell. Thus daily his gouty inventions him pained, Id. They grow very well both on the hazelly brickearths, and on gravel. Mortimer. Like the Israelites in the brick-kilns, they multiplied the more for their oppression. Decay of Piety. The sexton comes to know where he is to be laid, and whether his grave is to be plain or bricked. Swift From this analysis, we see it appears to be neither a variety of talc nor of meerschaum, but rather a hydrate of silica. Sir Henry Wotton speaks of a sort of bricks at Venice, of which stately columns were built; they were first formed in a circular mould, and cut, before they were burnt, into four or more quarters or sides; afterwards, in laying, they were joined so close, and the points concentrated so exactly, that the pillars appeared one entire piece. In modern times brick-making is nowhere carried to greater perfection than in Holland, where most of the floors of houses and often the streets are paved with exceilent and very durable bricks. Loam and marl are considered the best English materials for bricks. The former is a natural mixture of sand and clay, which may be converted at once into this useful manufacture; marl is a mixture of limestone and clay in various proportions. The best proportion for common bricks would be three parts of clay, and one part of limestone or chalk powdered. Such a mixture exposed to heat experiences an incipient fusion, and thereby is rendered much harder and denser; it imbibes much less water than any other material, and is therefore much less liable to crack and fall to pieces in winter. We cannot here enter into details respecting the chemical investigations of different periods as to the nature of clay. Suffice it to say, that during the last century the labors of Pott, Baume, and Margraaf, threw a sufficient light upon the subject to enable us to pronounce it a mixture of alumina and silica, in different proportions. It was shown at the same time that it also frequently contains sulphuric acid and potash. More recent researches have likewise discovered in its composition mica, chalk, felspar, hornblende, bitumen, oxide of iron, and coal, which modify its qualities considerably, and adapt it for the various purposes of different manufactories. The neighbourhood of London is remarkably adapted for the making of bricks, the soil of the whole surrounding country being clay at a certain depth, generally under a bed of gravel; and the bottom of the Thames yielding the sand which is used in this manufacture. Here, too, of course, is an uncommon consumption of them; and although from the peculiar advantages of the spot an excellent yellow brick has long distinguished the manufacture of the metropolis, great practical carelessness seems to pervade the whole business as conducted here. We see no reason why our Dutch neighbours should so decidedly excel us in this particular; except that the spirit of a short-sighted parsimoniousness has crept into this as into many other of our calculations; that is, houses are built in and about London, not to endure nor to sell, strictly, but to let, and that for comparatively short leases. frequently. Hence our ordinary architects and takers of building leases have no part in the ambition of rearing an 'eternal city:' whole streets may be seen in youth decrepid,' propped, and tottering, sometimes before tenanted, and the greater number of bricks used are not above half kneaded and half burnt. Brick-clay is generally dug out and exposed at the end of one season, for the operations of the next. It should always be laid open to the air and weather for a considerable time; and if for two or three seasons, the bricks will be the better made. The stones of which the clay has been originally formed, thus become more completely decomposed, and the clay itself better pulverised. The frosts of winter, too, temper and mellow it very beneficially. It should be often turned over, and afterwards ground by a mill to a complete powder; but ordinarily the clay is tempered by the treading of men or cattle; the earth being thrown into shallow pits, where it is wrought and incorporated, until formed into a homogeneous paste. This is facilitated by occasionally adding small quantities of water; but the less water that is used, the better for the substance of the clay, which will be more tough and gluey, and consequently the bricks will be smoother and more firm. This is the most laborious, and perhaps most essential, part of the process; to the negligence of which we are to attribute almost all the bad qualities of modern bricks; hence are they light, soapy, spongy, and full of cracks. Whereas, if the clay be properly tempered, they are hard, ponderous, and durable. M. Gallon having taken a quantity of brick-earth tempered in the usual way, let it remain exposed to the air for seven hours, and then caused it to be moistened and beaten for the space of half an hour; the next morning the operation was repeated; and in the afternoon the clay was again beaten for fifteen minutes more; making the whole additional labor an hour and a quarter. The bricks made of this earth being dried in the air for thirteen days, and burned along with the rest without any particular precautions, were found to be not only heavier than common bricks, but also very different in strength; for on placing their centre on a sharp edge, and loading both the ends, Mr. Gallon found, that while it took a weight of 65 lb. at each end to break them; other bricks were broken by the weight of only 35 lbs. The improvement in the quality of the article thus far exceeding the additional labor. A proper quantity of coarse sand is a fine annealer of brick-clay; it answers best when the particles are of such a size as to be readily distinguished by the eye. When as large as coriander seeds, it has been found to vitrify better than when very fine. London brick-makers add also about one-third part of ashes or small coal to their clay, the consequence of which is said to be that when the mixture is sufficiently heated afterwards, those fires burn of themselves, and are chiefly fed with the fuel supplied by the clay. Bricks, according to Mr. Malcolm, are made by the thousand, as the most satisfactory mode between master and man, and a handy man could mould in one day, viz. from five in the morning until eight at night, |