BRA 
continue t! em.'This induced him to fall upon 
means of being introduced to the Emperor 
Rodolphus, . who was fond of mechanism 
and chemical experiments : and to smooth 
the way to an interview, Tycho now pub- 
lished his book, “ Astronomia instaurafa 
Mechanics, ” adorned with figures, and de- 
dicated it to the Emperor. That prince 
received him at Prague with great civility 
and respect ; gave him a magnificent house 
till he could procure one for him more fit 
for astronomical observations ; he also as- 
signed him a pension of 3000 crowns ; and 
promised him a fee for himself and his de- 
scendants. Here then he settled in the lat- 
ter part of 1398, with his sons and scholars, 
and among them the celebrated Kepler who 
had joined him, But he did not long enjoy 
this happy situation, for about three years 
after he died, on the 24th of October, 1601, 
of a retention of urine, in the 55th year of 
his age, and was interred in a very magnifi- 
cent manner in the principal church at 
Prague, where a noble monument was 
erected to him ; leaving, beside bis wife, 
two sons and four daughters. On the ap- 
proach of death he enjoined his sons to take 
care that none of his works should be lost ; 
exhorted the students to attend closely to 
their exercises ; and recommended to Kep- 
ler the finishing of the Rudolphine Tables 
which he had constructed for regulating the 
motion of the planets 
Brahe’s skill in astronomy is universally 
known ; and he is famed for being the in- 
ventor of a new system of fhe planets, 
which he endeavoured, though without suc- 
cess, to establish on die ruins of that of 
Copernicus. He was very credulous with 
regard to judicial astrology and presages : 
if he met an old woman when he went out 
of doors, or a hare upon the road on a jour- 
ney, he would turn back immediately, be- 
ing persuaded that it was a bad omen : also, 
when he lived at Uranibourg, he kept at his 
house a madman, whom he placed at his 
feet at table and fed himself; for as lie 
imagined that every thing spoken by mad 
persons presaged something, he carefully 
observed all that this man said ; and be- 
cause it sometimes proved true, he fancied 
it might always be depended on. He was 
of a very irritable disposition : a mere trifle 
put him in a passion ; and against persons 
of the first rank, whom he thought his ene- 
mies, he openly discovered his resentment. 
He was very apt to rally others, but highly 
provoked when the same liberty was taken 
with himself. The principal part of his 
writings are : 
BRA 
1. An account of the New Star which 
appeared Nov. Iltli, 1572, in Cassiopeia; 
Copenh. 1573, in 4to. 2, Another treatise 
on the New Phenomena of the Heavens. 
In the first part of which he treats of the 
restitution, as he calls it, of the sun and of 
the fixed stars. And in the second part, of 
a new star which had then made its appear- 
ance. 3. A collection of Astronomical 
Epistles ; printed in 4to. at Uranibourg, in 
1596; Nuremberg in 1602; and atFranck- 
fort in 1610. It was dedicated to Maurice 
Landgrave of Hesse ; because there are in it 
a considerable number of letters of the Land- 
grave William, his father, and of Christo- 
pher Rothmann, the mathematician of that 
prince, to Tycho, and of Tycho to them. 
4. The Rudolphine Tables; which he had 
not finished when he died ; but were revised 
and published by Kepler, as Tycho had de- 
sired. 5. An accurate Enumeration of the 
Fixed Stars : addressed to the Emperor 
Rodolphus. 6. A complete Catalogue of 1000 
of the Fixed Stars ; which Kepler has insert- 
ed in the Rudolphine Tables. 7. “ Historia 
Coelestis,” or a History of the Heavens, in 
two parts: the first contains the observa- 
tions he had made at Uranibourg, in sixteen 
books ; the latter contains the observations 
made at Wandesburg, Wittenberg, Prague, 
occ. in four books. 
The apparatus of Tycho was purchased 
by the Emperor Rodolphus for 22,000. 
crowns. It remained, however, useless and 
concealed till the troubles of Bohemia, 
when the army of the Elector Palatine plun- 
dered them, and in the true spirit of barba- 
rism breaking some of them, and applying 
others to purposes for which they were 
never designed. The great celestial globe 
of brass was preserved, carried from 
Prague, and deposited with the Jesuits of 
Naysia in Silesia, whence it was afterwards 
taken, in the year 1633, and placed in the 
Flail of the Royal Academy at Copenhagen. 
BRAIL, or Brails, in a ship, are small 
ropes made use of to furl the sails across : 
they belong only to the two courses and the 
mizen-sail ; they are reeved through the 
bloqks, seized on each side the ties, and 
come down before the, sail, being at the 
very skirt thereof fastened to the cringles ; 
their use is, when the sail is furled across, 
to hale tip its bunt, that it may the more 
easily be taken up or let fall. Hale up fhe 
brails, or brail up the sail, that is, hale up 
the sail, in order to be furled or bound 
close to the yard. 
BRAIN, in anatomy, that soft white mass 
inclosed in the cranium or skull, in which 
