niary disasters were those caused
by the fall of the great Barentin viaduct on the Rouen and Havre
railway, and by the failure of Peto and Betts. Brassey was one of the
first to aim at improving the relations between engineers and
contractors, by setting himself against the corrupt practices which were
common. He resolutely resisted the "scamping" of work and the bribery of
inspectors, and what he called the "smothering of the engineer"; and he
did much in this way to bring about a better state of things.
Large-hearted and generous to a rare degree, modest and simple in his
taste and manners, he was conscious of his power as a leader in his
calling, and knew how to use it wisely and for noble ends. Honours came
to him unsought. The cross of the Legion of Honour was conferred on him.
From Victor Emmanuel he received the cross of the Order of St Maurice
and St Lazarus; and from the emperor of Austria the decoration of the
Iron Crown, which it is said had not before been given to a foreigner.
He died at St Leonards on the 8th of December 1870. His life and labours
are commemorated in a volume by Sir Arthur Helps (1872).

He left three sons, of whom the eldest, THOMAS (b. 1836), was knighted
and afterwards (1886) created BARON BRASSEY. Lord Brassey, who was
educated at Rugby and Oxford, entered parliament as a liberal in 1865,
and devoted himself largely to naval affairs. He was civil lord of the
admiralty (1880-1883), and secretary to the admiralty (1883-1885); and
both before and after his elevation to the peerage did important work on
naval and statistical inquiries for the government. In 1893-1805 he was
president of the Institution of Naval Architects. In 1894 he was a
lord-in-waiting, and from 1895 to 1900 was governor of Victoria. In 1908
he was appointed lord warden of the Cinque Ports. His voyages in his
yacht "Sunbeam" from 1876 onwards, with his first wife (d. 1887), who
published an interesting book on the subject, took him all over the
world. Lord Brassey married a second time in 1890. Among other
publications, his inauguration of the _Naval Annual_ (1886 onwards), and
his volumes on _The British Navy_, are the most important. His eldest
son Thomas, who edited the _Naval Annual_ (1890-1904), and
unsuccessfully contested several parliamentary constituencies, was born
in 1862.

BRASSO (Ger. _Kronstadt_; Rumanian, _Brasov_), a town of Hungary, in
Transylvania, 206 m. S.E. of Kolozsvar by rail. Pop. (1900) 3