variety of manœuvres, he ended by denouncing Cantimir to the divan, without, however, renouncing his own relations with Peter the Great. At one and the same time, he engaged the czar to invade Wallachia, and the grand vizier to cross the Danube. For some reason the arrival of the Russian troops was delayed, and the provisions intended for their use fell into the hands of the Turks. Perishing with hunger and thirst, the troops of the czar only escaped total destruction by the treaty of 21st July, 1711, which completely subverted the independence of Moldavia and Wallachia, and delivered up these principalities to the dominion of the Porte. Brancovan now imagined that his last act of treachery would atone for his former sins; and indeed at first he was not molested. The divan, however, was perfectly cognisant of all his treaties with Austria and Russia, and in April, 1714, he was suddenly deposed, arrested without opposition, and conveyed to Constantinople. The vast treasures found in his palace, induced the sultan to put Constantine and his eldest son to torture, supposing that they might have concealed a portion of their wealth. Having heroically endured these tortures for five days, the unhappy prince was executed on the 26th August, 1714, along with his four sons. From his grandson, who alone was spared, springs the family of Brancovan still extant in the principalities.—G. M.
BESSARION, John, born at Trebizonde about the year 1390; died in 1472; first studied in a monastery at Peloponnesus, under the famous Gemistus Pletho, from whom he imbibed his ardent admiration of Plato. In 1438 he accompanied the Emperor Palæologus to the council of Ferrara, called for the purpose of uniting the Greek and Latin churches, and did his utmost to bring about the union. His services to the Latin church on this occasion were rewarded by the pope, Eugene IV., nominating him to the dignity of cardinal-priest; and by subsequent promotions he became archbishop of Siponto, cardinal-bishop of Sabina, and patriarch of Constantinople. He discharged several important diplomatic missions, and twice narrowly escaped being elected pope. The controversy between the admirers of Aristotle and of Plato was carried on with much warmth in this age, and Bessarion, after a vain attempt to conciliate the two parties, threw all his weight into the scale of Plato; his most famous work on this subject being a reply to George of Trebizonde, entitled "In calumniatorem Platonis." In defending Plato, he goes to the extreme of maintaining that his theology and morals are perfectly in accordance with revealed religion. His translations of the Memorabilia of Xenophon, and of the Metaphysics of Aristotle, were also celebrated.—J. D. E.
BESSÉ, Joseph de, a French physician, born at Peyrusse, Aveyron, about the year 1670, studied at Montpellier and Toulouse, and afterwards went to Paris, where his scientific knowledge caused him to be mixed up with the discussions of the learned world. Bessé died in Paris at an advanced age, but the precise date of his death is not known. His numerous writings furnish a faithful summary of the progress of medicine during the first half of the eighteenth century. His earliest works, published at Toulouse in 1699 and 1701, are a treatise "On the Passions of Man," and "Analytical researches on the structure of the parts of the human body." These works possess considerable interest, and the reputation which he gained from them may have been one of the causes of his taking up his abode in Paris soon after their publication. In the second of them he developes the doctrine of his master, Chirac—maintains the existence of ferments in the organs of secretion, and the presence of compounds of acids and alkalies in all parts of the body, causing the exercise of the functions. Setting aside this absurd theory, his work contains numerous interesting anatomical and physiological observations. Bessé's first work, published in Paris after the second edition of his "Researches," was a "Dissertatio Analytica de Febribus," in 1712, followed in the next year by another Latin treatise, entitled "Ergo partus a fluxu menstruoso." For ten years after this Bessé seems to have published nothing; but in 1723 he attacked Helvetius in a rather violent manner, in a "Letter to the author of the new book upon the Animal Economy," &c., accusing him of borrowing the idea, that inflammation is caused by the passage of the blood into the lymphatic vessels, from Boerhaave, without acknowledgment; but at the same time opposing this notion, and ascribing inflammation to the obstruction of the capillary vessels. Helvetius replied with considerable asperity to this criticism, and Bessé answered him in a "Replique aux lettres de M. Helvetius," &c., published at Amsterdam and Paris in 1726. Besides these works, Bessé published some learned dissertations "On Venesection in intermittent fevers," 1730; "On Amputation in cases of Gangrene," 1738; "On the Cæsarean section," 1744; and "On Aneurism of the crural artery," 1752.—W. S. D.
BESSÉ, Pierre, a French preacher of some celebrity, born at Rosiers in Limousin towards the middle of the sixteenth century; died in 1639. He was a member of the Sorbonne, principal of the college of Pompadour, and preacher to Louis XIII. His sermons were frequently reprinted.
BESSEL, Christian George, a German moralist and theologian, born at Minden, lived in the second part of the seventeenth century. Author of a rare and curious work entitled "Faber fortunæ politicæ."
BESSEL, Friedrich Wilhelm, born at Minden, July 22nd, 1784; died in the sixty-second year of his age, at the observatory of Königsberg, on 7th March, 1846. A practical astronomer, of whom it may be said most justly that he united the best qualities of an Hipparchus, a Tycho, and a Bradley,—superadding riches of his own. No man in recent times, among cultivators of astronomy, has achieved a surer immortality than Bessel's; not a step can be taken henceforth in advance, unless it departs from some point that has been fixed by this most remarkable person. Bessel's peculiar nature, in so far as it can be pourtrayed in this brief sketch, will be best gathered from a rapid survey of his main achievements. These may be divided into three classes.—I. An observation in astronomy, i.e., the apparent place of a celestial body, as given by the first indication of an instrument, is of the rudest kind. First, the apparent place is not the true place, because of the varying position of the earth and of the absolute direction of its pole. Corrections of a laborious and most delicate description must be applied, so that apparent places may, in so far as discrepancies are dependent on this cause, be reduced to true places. The discovery of the nature and general causes of the more evanescent of these discrepancies, is due to our own Bradley; but for their true practical values, and the formulæ by which correction can be most easily applied, the world of science is indebted solely to Bessel. His earlier work, the "Fundamenta Astronomiæ," is one of the finest and most appropriate compliments that one great man ever paid to another. Founding on the observations of the incomparable Bradley, he reduced them all into order, carefully determined the errors of Bradley's comparatively imperfect instruments, and eliminated from the works of our astronomer those fundamental and universal constants, the application of which to any crude observation, enables us to state exactly what the place of the observed object would be, had we seen it from an invariable point in the centre of our planetary system. The work begun with "Fundamenta Astronomiæ," was completed in the "Tabulæ Regiomontanæ." But corrections, arising from variations in the position of the earth, were not, in Bessel's opinion, all that perfectly accurate observation requires. It is now necessary to observe by aid of very complex instruments. Those instruments, although made by the best artists of this or any time—are they correct? Bessel first reduced the conception to practice, that no instrument—be it the finest and best—ought to be taken by the observer as correct, in any part. An apparently discouraging proposition; but a most true one. Modern practice is based on this idea. An instrument, from the hands of the best maker, is presumed by the astronomer to be incorrect in every movement. Every movement is tested, accordingly, by the unerring regularity of the diurnal motion of the stars. The existence and character of its errors are hence deduced, and formulæ are constructed thereupon, the application of which to individual observations, suffices to eliminate from them all errors depending on infinitesimal imperfections of the mechanism. To actual workers in astronomy at the present day, it is needless to state how much of this memorable reform is due to Bessel: no better exercise can be recommended to the student than the thorough perusal of his memorable papers on the Königsberg Heliometer.—II. Bessel's practical and sagacious nature is farther manifested by all his positive works. There is scarcely a definite and difficult problem presented by our modern astronomy, that could be resolved by exact and scientific observations, which he did not advance. To him unquestionably belongs the honour of having, by aid of his great Heliometer, first determined the parallax of a fixed star—61 Cygni; (our own Henderson had about the
