Compare the verses in Burns--

"We twa hae run about the braes

And pu'd the gowans fine;

But we've wandered mony a weary foot

Sin auld lang syne.

We twa hae paidl'd in the burn,

Frae morning sun till dine:

But seas between us braid hae roar'd

Sin auld lang syne."

Burns as a poet of the inanimate world doubtless derived hints from Thomson

of _The Seasons_, but in his power of tuning its manifestation to the moods

of the mind he is more properly ranked as a forerunner of Wordsworth. He

never follows the fashions of his century, except in his failures--in his

efforts at set panegyric or fine letter-writing. His highest work knows

nothing of "Damon" or "Musidora." He leaves the atmosphere of drawing-rooms

for the ingle or the ale-house or the mountain breeze.

The affectations of his style are insignificant and rare. His prevailing

characteristic is an absolute sincerity. A love for the lower forms of

social life was his besetting sin; Nature was his healing power. Burns

compares himself to an Aeolian harp, strung to every wind of heaven. His

genius flows over all living and lifeless things with a sympathy that finds

nothing mean or insignificant. An uprooted daisy becomes in his pages an

enduring emblem of the fate of artless maid and simple bard. He disturbs a

mouse's nest and finds in the "tim'rous beastie" a fellow-mortal doomed

like himself to "thole the winter's sleety dribble," and draws his

oft-repeated moral. He walks abroad and, in a verse that glints with the

light of its own rising sun before the fierce sarcasm of "The Holy Fair,"

describes the melodies of a "simmer Sunday morn." He loiters by Afton Water

and "murmurs by the running brook a music sweeter than its own." He stands

by a roofless tower, where "the howlet mourns in her dewy bower," and "sets

the wild echoes flying," and adds to a perfect picture of the scene his

famous vision of "Libertie." In a single stanza he concentrates the

sentiment of many Night Thoughts--

"The pale moon is setting beyond the white wave,

And Time is setting wi' me, O."

For other examples of the same graphic power we may refer to the course of

his stream--

"Whiles ow'r a linn the burnie plays

As through the glen it wimpled," &c.,

or to "The Birks of Aberfeldy" or the "spate" in the dialogue of "The Brigs

of Ayr." The poet is as much at home in the presence of this flood as by

his "trottin' burn's meander." Familiar with all the seasons he represents

the phases of a northern winter with a frequency characteristic of his

clime and of his fortunes; her tempests became anthems in his verse, and

the sounding woods "raise his thoughts to Him that walketh on the wings of

the wind"; full of pity for the shelterless poor, the "ourie cattle," the

"silly sheep," and the "helpless birds," he yet reflects that the bitter

blast is not "so unkind as man's ingratitude." This constant tendency to

ascend above the fair or wild features of outward things, or to penetrate

beneath them, to make them symbols, to endow them with a voice to speak for

humanity, distinguishes Burns as a descriptive poet from the rest of his

countrymen. As a painter he is rivalled by Dunbar and James I., more rarely

by Thomson and Ramsay. The "lilt" of Tannahill's finest verse is even more

charming. But these writers rest in their art; their main care is for their

own genius. The same is true in a minor degree of some of his great English

successors. Keats has a palette of richer colours, but he seldom

condescends to "human nature's daily food." Shelley floats in a thin air to

stars and mountain tops, and vanishes from our gaze like his skylark.

Byron, in the midst of his revolutionary fervour, never forgets that he

himself belongs to the "caste of Vere de Vere." Wordsworth's placid

affection and magnanimity stretch beyond mankind, and, as in

"Hart-leap-well" and the "Cuckoo," extend to bird and beast; he moralizes

grandly on the vicissitudes of common life, but he does not enter into,

because by right of superior virtue he places himself above them. "From the

Lyrical Ballads," it has been said, "it does not appear that men eat or

drink, marry or are given in marriage." We revere the monitor who,

consciously good and great, gives us the dry light of truth, but we love

the bard, _nostrae deliciae_, who is all fire--fire from heaven and

Ayrshire earth mingling in the outburst of passion and of power, which is

his poetry and the inheritance of his race. He had certainly neither

culture nor philosophy enough to have written the "Ode on the Recollections

of Childhood," but to appreciate that ode requires an education. The

sympathies of Burns, as broad as Wordsworth's, are more intense; in turning

his pages we feel ourselves more decidedly in the presence of one who joys

with those who rejoice and mourns with those who mourn. He is never

shallow, ever plain, and the expression of his feeling is so terse that it

is always memorable. Of the people he speaks more directly for the people

than any of our more considerable poets. Chaucer has a perfect hold of the

homeliest phases of life, but he wants the lyric element, and the charm of

his language has largely faded from untutored ears. Shakespeare, indeed,

has at once a loftier vision and a wider grasp; for he sings of "Thebes and

Pelops line," of Agincourt and Philippi, as of Falstaff, and Snug the

joiner, and the "meanest flower that blows." But not even Shakespeare has

put more thought into poetry which the most prosaic must appreciate than

Burns has done. The latter moves in a narrower sphere and wants the

strictly dramatic faculty, but its place is partly supplied by the

vividness of his narrative. His realization of incident and character is

manifested in the sketches in which the manners and prevailing fancies of

his countrymen are immortalized in connexion with local scenery. Among

those almost every variety of disposition finds its favourite. The quiet

households of the kingdom have received a sort of apotheosis in the

"Cottar's Saturday Night." It has been objected that the subject does not

afford scope for the more daring forms of the author's genius; but had he

written no other poem, this heartful rendering of a good week's close in a

God-fearing home, sincerely devout, and yet relieved from all suspicion of

sermonizing by its humorous touches, would have secured a permanent place

in literature. It transcends Thomson and Beattie at their best, and will

smell sweet like the actions of the just for generations to come.

Lovers of rustic festivity may hold that the poet's greatest performance is

his narrative of "Halloween," which for easy vigour, fulness of rollicking

life, blended truth and fancy, is unsurpassed in its kind. Campbell,

Wilson, Hazlitt, Montgomery, Burns himself, and the majority of his

critics, have [v.04 p.0859] recorded their preference for "Tam o' Shanter,"

where the weird superstitious element that has played so great a part in

the imaginative work of this part of our island is brought more prominently

forward. Few passages of description are finer than that of the roaring

Doon and Alloway Kirk glimmering through the groaning trees; but the unique

excellence of the piece consists in its variety, and a perfectly original

combination of the terrible and the ludicrous. Like Goethe's _Walpurgis

Nacht_, brought into closer contact with real life, it stretches from the

drunken humours of Christopher Sly to a world of fantasies almost as

brilliant as those of the _Midsummer Night's Dream_, half solemnized by the

severer atmosphere of a sterner clime. The contrast between the lines

"Kings may be blest," &c., and those which follow, beginning "But pleasures

are like poppies spread," is typical of the perpetual antithesis of the

author's thought and life, in which, at the back of every revelry, he sees

the shadow of a warning hand, and reads on the wall the writing, _Omnia

mutantur_. With equal or greater confidence other judges have pronounced

Burns's masterpiece to be "The Jolly Beggars." Certainly no other single

production so illustrates his power of exalting what is insignificant,

glorifying what is mean, and elevating the lowest details by the force of

his genius. "The form of the piece," says Carlyle, "is a mere cantata, the

theme the half-drunken snatches of a joyous band of vagabonds, while the

grey leaves are floating on the gusts of the wind in the autumn of the

year. But the whole is compacted, refined and poured forth in one flood of

liquid harmony. It is light, airy and soft of movement, yet sharp and

precise in its details; every face is a portrait, and the whole a group in

clear photography. The blanket of the night is drawn aside; in full ruddy

gleaming light these rough tatterdemalions are seen at their boisterous

revel wringing from Fate another hour of wassail and good cheer." Over the

whole is flung a half-humorous, half-savage satire--aimed, like a two-edged

sword, at the laws and the law-breakers, in the acme of which the graceless

crew are raised above the level of ordinary gipsies, footpads and rogues,

and are made to sit "on the hills like gods together, careless of mankind,"

and to launch their Titan thunders of rebellion against the world.

"A fig for those by law protected;

Liberty's a glorious feast;

Courts for cowards were erected,

Churches built to please the priest."

A similar mixture of drollery and defiance appears in the justly celebrated

"Address to the Deil," which, mainly whimsical, is relieved by touches oan

in the conception of such a being straying in lonely places and loitering

among trees, or in the familiarity with which the poet lectures so awful a

personage,"--we may add, than in the inimitable outbreak at the close--

"O would you tak a thought an' men'."

Carlyle, in reference to this passage, cannot resist the suggestion of a

parallel from Sterne. "He is the father of curses and lies, said Dr Slop,

and is cursed and damned already. I am sorry for it, quoth my Uncle Toby."

Burns fared ill at the hands of those who were not sorry for it, and who

repeated with glib complacency every terrible belief of the system in which

they had been trained. The most scathing of his _Satires_, under which head

fall many of his minor and frequent passages in his major pieces, are

directed against the false pride of birth, and what he conceived to be the

false pretences of religion. The apologue of "Death and Dr Hornbook," "The

Ordination," the song "No churchman am I for to rail and to write," the

"Address to the Unco Guid," "Holy Willie," and above all "The Holy Fair,"

with its savage caricature of an ignorant ranter of the time called Moodie,

and others of like stamp, not unnaturally provoked offence. As regards the

poet's attitude towards some phases of Calvinism prevalent during his life,

it has to be remarked that from the days of Dunbar there has been a degree

of antagonism between Scottish verse and the more rigid forms of Scottish

theology.

It must be admitted that in protesting against hypocrisy he has

occasionally been led beyond the limits prescribed by good taste. He is at

times abusive of those who differ from him. This, with other offences

against decorum, which here and there disfigure his pages, can only be

condoned by an appeal to the general tone of his writing, which is

reverential. Burns had a firm faith in a Supreme Being, not as a vague

mysterious Power; but as the Arbiter of human life. Amid the vicissitudes

of his career he responds to the cottar's summons, "Let us worship God."

"An atheist's laugh's a poor exchange

For Deity offended"

is the moral of all his verse, which treats seriously of religious matters.

His prayers in rhyme give him a high place among secular Psalmists.

Like Chaucer, Burns was a great moralist, though a rough one. In the

moments of his most intense revolt against conventional prejudice and

sanctimonious affectation, he is faithful to the great laws which underlie

change, loyal in his veneration for the cardinal virtues--Truth, Justice

and Charity,--and consistent in the warnings, to which his experience gives

an unhappy force, against transgressions of Temperance. In the "Epistle to

a Young Friend," the shrewdest advice is blended with exhortations

appealing to the highest motive, that which transcends the calculation of

consequences, and bids us walk in the straight path from the feeling of

personal honour, and "for the glorious privilege of being independent."

Burns, like Dante, "loved well because he hated, hated wickedness that

hinders loving," and this feeling, as in the lines--"Dweller in yon dungeon

dark," sometimes breaks bounds; but his calmer moods are better represented

by the well-known passages in the "Epistle to Davie," in which he preaches

acquiescence in our lot, and a cheerful acceptance of our duties in the

sphere where we are placed. This _philosophie douce_, never better sung by

Horace, is the prevailing refrain of our author's _Songs_. On these there

are few words to add to the acclaim of a century. They have passed into the

air we breathe; they are so real that they seem things rather than words,

or, nearer still, living beings. They have taken all hearts, because they

are the breath of his own; not polished cadences, but utterances as direct

as laughter or tears. Since Sappho loved and sang, there has been no such

national lyrist as Burns. Fine ballads, mostly anonymous, existed in

Scotland previous to his time; and shortly before a few authors had

produced a few songs equal to some of his best. Such are Alexander Ross's

"Wooed and Married," Lowe's "Mary's Dream," "Auld Robin Gray," "The Land o'

the Leal" and the two versions of "The Flowers o' the Forest." From these

and many of the older pieces in Ramsay's collection, Burns admits to have

derived copious suggestions and impulses. He fed on the past literature of

his country as Chaucer on the old fields of English thought, and--

"Still the elements o' sang,

In formless jumble, right and wrang,

Went floating in his brain."

But he gave more than he received; he brought forth an hundredfold; he

summed up the stray material of the past, and added so much of his own that

one of the most conspicuous features of his lyrical genius is its variety

in new paths. Between the first of war songs, composed in a storm on a

moor, and the pathos of "Mary in Heaven," he has made every chord in our

northern life to vibrate. The distance from "Duncan Gray" to "Auld Lang

Syne" is nearly as great as that from Falstaff to Ariel. There is the

vehemence of battle, the wail of woe, the march of veterans "red-wat-shod,"

the smiles of meeting, the tears of parting friends, the gurgle of brown

burns, the roar of the wind through pines, the rustle of barley rigs, the

thunder on the hill--all Scotland is in his verse. Let who will make her

laws, Burns has made the songs, which her emigrants recall "by the long

wash of Australasian seas," in which maidens are wooed, by which mothers

lull their infants, which return "through open casements unto dying

ears"--they are the links, the watchwords, the masonic symbols of the Scots

race.

(J. N.) [v.04 p.0860]

The greater part of Burns's verse was posthumously published, and, as he

himself took no care to collect the scattered pieces of occasional verse,

different editors have from time to time printed, as his, verses that must

be regarded as spurious. _Poems chiefly in the Scottish Dialect_, by Robert

Burns (Kilmarnock, 1786), was followed by an enlarged edition printed in

Edinburgh in the next year. Other editions of this book were printed--in

London (1787), an enlarged edition at Edinburgh (2 vols., 1793) and a

reprint of this in 1794. Of a 1790 edition mentioned by Robert Chambers no

traces can be found. Poems by Burns appeared originally in _The Caledonian

Mercury, The Edinburgh Evening Courant, The Edinburgh Herald, The Edinburgh

Advertiser_; the London papers, _Stuart's Star and Evening Advertiser_

(subsequently known as _The Morning Star_), _The Morning Chronicle_; and in

the _Edinburgh Magazine_ and _The Scots Magazine_. Many poems, most of

which had first appeared elsewhere, were printed in a series of penny

chap-books, _Poetry Original and Select_ (Brash and Reid, Glasgow), and

some appeared separately as broadsides. A series of tracts issued by

Stewart and Meikle (Glasgow, 1796-1799) includes some Burns's numbers, _The

Jolly Beggars, Holy Willie's Prayer_ and other poems making their first

appearance in this way. The seven numbers of this publication were reissued

in January 1800 as _The Poetical Miscellany_. This was followed by Thomas

Stewart's _Poems ascribed to Robert Burns_ (Glasgow, 1801). Burns's songs

appeared chiefly in James Johnson's _Scots Musical Museum_ (6 vols.,

1787-1803), which he appears after the first volume to have virtually

edited, though the two last volumes were published only after his death;

and in George Thomson's _Select Collection of Original Scottish Airs_ (6

vols., 1793-1841). Only five of the songs done for Thomson appeared during

the poet's lifetime, and Thomson's text cannot be regarded with confidence.

The Hastie MSS. in the British Museum (Addit. MS. 22,307) include 162

songs, many of them in Burns's handwriting; and the Dalhousie MS., at

Brechin Castle, contains Burns's correspondence with Thomson. For a full

account of the songs see James C. Dick, _The Songs of Robert Burns now

first printed with the Melodies for which they were written_ (2 vols.,

1903).

The items in Mr W. Craibe Angus's _Printed Works of Robert Burns_ (1899)

number nine hundred and thirty. Only the more important collected editions

can be here noticed. Dr Currie was the anonymous editor of the _Works of

Robert Burns; with an Account of his Life, and a Criticism on his Writings

..._ (Liverpool, 1800). This was undertaken for the benefit of Burns's

family at the desire of his friends, Alexander Cunningham and John Syme. A

second and amended edition appeared in 1801, and was followed by others,

but Currie's text is neither accurate nor complete. Additional matter

appeared in _Reliques of Robert Burns_ ... by R.H. Cromek (London, 1808).

In _The Works of Robert Burns, With his Life by Allan Cunningham_ (8 vols.,

London, 1834) there are many additions and much biographical material. _The

Works of Robert Burns_, edited by James Hogg and William Motherwell (5

vols., 1834-1836, Glasgow and Edinburgh), contains a life of the poet by

Hogg, and some useful notes by Motherwell attempting to trace the sources

of Burns's songs. _The Correspondence between Burns and Clarinda_ was

edited by W.C. M^cLehose (Edinburgh, 1843). An improved text of the poems

was provided in the second "Aldine Edition" of the _Poetical Works_ (3

vols., 1839), for which Sir H. Nicolas, the editor, made use of many

original MSS. In the _Life and Works of Robert Burns_, edited by Robert

Chambers (Edinburgh, 4 vols., 1851-1852; library edition, 1856-1857; new

edition, revised by William Wallace, 1896), the poet's works are given in

chronological order, interwoven with letters and biography. The text was

bowdlerized by Chambers, but the book contained much new and valuable

information. Other well-known editions are those of George Gilfillan (2

vols., 1864); of Alexander Smith (Golden Treasury Series, London, 2 vols.,

1865); of P. Hately Waddell (Glasgow, 1867); one published by Messrs

Blackie & Son, with Dr Currie's memoir and an essay by Prof. Wilson

(1843-1844); of W. Scott Douglas (the Kilmarnock edition, 1876, and the

"library" edition, 1877-1879), and of Andrew Lang, assisted by W.A. Craigie

(London, 1896). The complete correspondence between Burns and Mrs Dunlop

was printed in 1898.

A critical edition of the _Poetry of Robert Burns_, which may be regarded

as definitive, and is provided with full notes and variant readings, was

prepared by W.E. Henley and T.F. Henderson (4 vols., Edinburgh, 1896-1897;

reprinted, 1901), and is generally known as the "Centenary Burns." In vol.

iii. the extent of Burns's indebtedness to Scottish folk-song and his

methods of adaptation are minutely discussed; vol. iv. contains an essay on

"Robert Burns. Life, Genius, Achievement," by W.E. Henley.

The chief original authority for Burns's life is his own letters. The

principal "lives" are to be found in the editions just mentioned. His

biography has also been written by J. Gibson Lockhart (_Life of Burns_,

Edinburgh, 1828); for the "English Men of Letters" series in 1879 by Prof.

J. Campbell Shairp; and by Sir Leslie Stephen in the _Dictionary of

National Biography_ (vol. viii., 1886). Among the more important essays on

Burns are those by Thomas Carlyle (_Edinburgh Review_, December 1828); by

John Nichol, the writer of the above article (W. Scott Douglas's edition of

Burns); by R.L. Stevenson (_Familiar Studies of Men and Books_); by Auguste

Angellier (_Robert Burns. La vie et les oeuvres_, 2 vols., Paris, 1893); by

Lord Rosebery (_Robert Burns: Two Addresses in Edinburgh_, 1896); by J.

Logie Robertson (in _In Scottish Fields_, Edin., 1890, and _Furth in

Field_, Edin., 1894); and T.F. Henderson (_Robert Burns_, 1904). There is a

selected bibliography in chronological order in W.A. Craigie's _Primer of

Burns_ (1896).

BURNS AND SCALDS. A burn is the effect of dry heat applied to some part of

the human body, a scald being the result of moist heat. Clinically there is

no distinction between the two, and their classification and treatment are

identical. In Dupuytren's classification, now most generally accepted,

burns are divided into six classes according to the severest part of the

lesion. Burns of the first degree are characterized by severe pain, redness

of the skin, a certain amount of swelling that soon passes, and later

exfoliation of the skin. Burns of the second degree show vesicles (small

blisters) scattered over the inflamed area, and containing a clear,

yellowish fluid. Beneath the vesicle the highly sensitive papillae of the

skin are exposed. Burns of this degree leave no scar, but often produce a

permanent discoloration. In burns of the third degree, there is a partial

destruction of the true skin, leaving sloughs of a yellowish or black

colour. The pain is at first intense, but passes off on about the second

day to return again at the end of a week, when the sloughs separate,

exposing the sensitive nerve filaments of the underlying skin. This results

in a slightly depressed cicatrix, which happily, however, shows but slight

tendency to contraction. Burns of the fourth degree, which follow the

prolonged application of any form of intense heat, involve the total

destruction of the true skin. The pain is much less severe than in the

preceding class, since the nerve endings have been totally destroyed. The

results, however, are far more serious, and the healing process takes place

only very slowly on account of the destruction of the skin glands. As a

result, deep puckered scars are formed, which show great tendency to

contract, and where these are situated on face, neck or joints the

resulting deformity and loss of function may be extremely serious. In burns

of the fifth degree the underlying muscles are more or less destroyed, and

in those of the sixth the bones are also charred. Examples of the last two

classes are mainly provided by epileptics who fall into a fire during a

fit.

The clinical history of a severe burn can be divided into three periods.

The first period lasts from 36 to 48 hours, during which time the patient

lies in a condition of profound shock, and consequently feels little or no

pain. If death results from shock, coma first supervenes, which deepens

steadily until the end comes. The second period begins when the effects of

shock pass, and continues until the slough separates, this usually taking

from seven to fourteen days. Considerable fever is present, and the

tendency to every kind of complication is very great. Bronchitis,

pneumonia, pleurisy, meningitis, intestinal catarrh, and even ulceration of

the duodenum, have all been recorded. Hence both nursing and medical

attendance must be very close during this time. It is probable that these

complications are all the result of septic infection and absorption, and

since the modern antiseptic treatment of burns they have become much less

common. The third period is prolonged until recovery takes place. Death may

result from septic absorption, or from the wound becoming infected with

some organism, as tetanus, erysipelas, &c. The prognosis depends chiefly on

the extent of skin involved, death almost invariably resulting when

one-third of the total area of the body is affected, however superficially.

Of secondary but still grave importance is the position of the burn, that

over a serous cavity making the future more doubtful than one on a limb.

Also it must be remembered that children very easily succumb to shock.

In treating a patient the condition of shock must be attended to first,

since from it arises the primary danger. The sufferer must be wrapped

immediately in hot blankets, and brandy given by the mouth or in an enema,

while ether can be injected hypodermically. If the pulse is very bad a

saline infusion must be administered. The clothes can then be removed and

the burnt surfaces thoroughly cleansed with a very mild antiseptic, a weak

solution of lysol acting very well. If there are blisters these must be

opened and the contained effusion allowed to [v.04 p.0861] escape. Some

surgeons leave them at this stage, but others prefer to remove the raised

epithelium. When thoroughly cleansed, the wound is irrigated with

sterilized saline solution and a dressing subsequently applied. For the

more superficial lesions by far the best results are obtained from the

application of gauze soaked in picric acid solution and lightly wrung out,

being covered with a large antiseptic wool pad and kept in position by a

bandage. Picric acid 1½ drams, absolute alcohol 3 oz., and distilled water

40 oz., make a good lotion. All being well, this need only be changed about

twice a week. The various kinds of oil once so greatly advocated in

treating burns are now largely abandoned since they have no antiseptic

properties. The deeper burns can only be attended to by a surgeon, whose

aim will be first to bring septic absorption to a minimum, and later to

hasten the healing process. Skin grafting has great value after extensive

burns, not because it hastens healing, which it probably does not do, but

because it has a marked influence in lessening cicatricial contraction.

When a limb is hopelessly charred, amputation is the only course.

BURNSIDE, AMBROSE EVERETT (1824-1881), American soldier, was born at

Liberty, Indiana, on the 23rd of May 1824, of Scottish pedigree, his

American ancestors settling first in South Carolina, and next in the

north-west wilderness, where his parents lived in a rude log cabin. He was

appointed to the United States military academy through casual favour, and

graduated in 1847, when war with Mexico was nearly over. In 1853 he

resigned his commission, and from 1853 to 1858 was engaged in the

manufacture of firearms at Bristol, R.I. In 1856 he invented a

breech-loading rifle. He was employed by the Illinois Central railroad

until the Civil War broke out. Then he took command of a Rhode Island

regiment of three months militia, on the summons of Governor Sprague, took

part in the relief of the national capital, and commanded a brigade in the

first battle of Bull Run. On the 6th of August 1861 he was commissioned

brigadier-general of volunteers, and placed in charge of the expeditionary

force which sailed in January 1862 under sealed orders for the North

Carolina coast. The victories of Roanoke Island, Newbern and Fort Macon

(February--April) were the chief incidents of a campaign which was

favourably contrasted by the people with the work of the main army on the

Atlantic coast. He was promoted major-general U.S.V. soon afterwards, and

early in July, with his North Carolina troops (IX. army corps), he was

transferred to the Virginian theatre of war. Part of his forces fought in

the last battles of Pope's campaign in Virginia, and Burnside himself was

engaged in the battles of South Mountain and Antietam. At the latter he was

in command of McClellan's left wing, but the want of vigour in his attack

was unfavourably criticized. His patriotic spirit, modesty and amiable

manners, made him highly popular, and upon McClellan's final removal (Nov.

7) from the Army of the Potomac, President Lincoln chose him as successor.

The choice was unfortunate. Much as he was liked, no one had ever looked

upon him as the equal of McClellan, and it was only with the greatest

reluctance that he himself accepted the responsibility, which he had on two

previous occasions declined. He sustained a crushing defeat at the battle

of Fredericksburg (13 Dec. 1862), and (Jan. 27) gave way to Gen. Hooker,

after a tenure of less than three months. Transferred to Cincinnati in

March 1863, he caused the arrest and court-martial of Clement L.

Vallandigham, lately an opposition member of Congress, for an alleged

disloyal speech, and later in the year his measures for the suppression of

press criticism aroused much opposition; he helped to crush Morgan's Ohio

raid in July; then, moving to relieve the loyalists in East Tennessee, in

September entered Knoxville, to which the Confederate general James

Longstreet unsuccessfully laid siege. In 1864 Burnside led his old IX.

corps under Grant in the Wilderness and Petersburg campaigns. After bearing

his part well in the many bloody battles of that time, he was overtaken

once more by disaster. The failure of the "Burnside mine" at Petersburg

brought about his resignation. A year later he left the service, and in

1866 he became governor of Rhode Island, serving for three terms

(1866-1869). From 1875 till his death he was a Republican member of the

United States Congress. He was present with the German headquarters at the

siege of Paris in 1870-71. He died at Bristol, Rhode Island, on the 13th of

September 1881.

See B.P. Poore, _Life and Public Services of Ambrose E. Burnside_

(Providence, 1882); A. Woodbury, _Major-General Burnside and the Ninth Army

Corps_ (Providence, 1867).

BURNTISLAND, a royal, municipal and police burgh of Fife, Scotland, on the

shore of the Firth of Forth, 5¾ m. S.W. of Kirkcaldy by the North British

railway. Pop. (1891) 4993; (1901) 4846. It is protected from the north wind

by the Binn (632 ft.), and in consequence of its excellent situation, its

links and sandy beach, it enjoys considerable repute as a summer resort.

The chief industries are distilling, fisheries, shipbuilding and shipping,

especially the export of coal and iron. Until the opening of the Forth

bridge, its commodious harbour was the northern station of the ferry across

the firth from Granton, 5 m. south. The parish church, dating from 1594, is

a plain structure, with a squat tower rising in two tiers from the centre

of the roof. The public buildings include two hospitals, a town-hall, music

hall, library and reading room and science institute. On the rocks forming

the western end of the harbour stands Rossend Castle, where the amorous

French poet Chastelard repeated the insult to Queen Mary which led to his

execution. In 1667 it was ineffectually bombarded by the Dutch. The burgh

was originally called Parva Kinghorn and later Wester Kinghorn. The origin

and meaning of the present name of the town have always been a matter of

conjecture. There seems reason to believe that it refers to the time when

the site, or a portion of it, formed an island, as sea-sand is the subsoil

even of the oldest quarters. Another derivation is from Gaelic words

meaning "the island beyond the bend." With Dysart, Kinghorn and Kirkcaldy,

it unites in returning one member to parliament.

BURR, AARON (1756-1836), American political leader, was born at Newark, New

Jersey, on the 6th of February 1756. His father, the Rev. Aaron Burr

(1715-1757), was the second president (1748-1757) of the College of New

Jersey, now Princeton University; his mother was the daughter of Jonathan

Edwards, the well-known Calvinist theologian. The son graduated from the

College of New Jersey in 1772, and two years later began the study of law

in the celebrated law school conducted by his brother-in-law, Tappan Reeve,

at Litchfield, Connecticut. Soon after the outbreak of the War of

Independence, in 1775, he joined Washington's army in Cambridge, Mass. He

accompanied Arnold's expedition into Canada in 1775, and on arriving before

Quebec he disguised himself as a Catholic priest and made a dangerous

journey of 120 m. through the British lines to notify Montgomery, at

Montreal, of Arnold's arrival. He served for a time on the staffs of

Washington and Putnam in 1776-77, and by his vigilance in the retreat from

Long Island he saved an entire brigade from capture. On becoming

lieutenant-colonel in July 1777, he assumed the command of a regiment, and

during the winter at Valley Forge guarded the "Gulf," a pass commanding the

approach to the camp, and necessarily the first point that would be

attacked. In the engagement at Monmouth, on the 28th of June 1778, he

commanded one of the brigades in Lord Stirling's division. In January 1779

Burr was assigned to the command of the "lines" of Westchester county, a

region between the British post at Kingsbridge and that of the Americans

about 15 m. to the north. In this district there was much turbulence and

plundering by the lawless elements of both Whigs and Tories and by bands of

ill-disciplined soldiers from both armies. Burr established a thorough

patrol system, rigorously enforced martial law, and quickly restored order.

He resigned from the army in March 1779, on account of ill-health, renewed

the study of law, was admitted to the bar at Albany in 1782, and began to

practise in New York city after its evacuation by the British in the

following year. In 1782 he married Theodosia Prevost (d. 1794), the widow

of a British army officer who had died in the West Indies during the War of

Independence. They had one child, a daughter, Theodosia, born in 1783, who

became widely known for her beauty and accomplishments, married Joseph

Alston of South Carolina [v.04 p.0862] in 1801, and was lost at sea in

1813. Burr was a member of the state assembly (1784-1785), attorney-general

of the state (1789-1791), United States senator (1791-1797), and again a

member of the assembly (1798-1799 and 1800-1801). As national parties

became clearly defined, he associated himself with the

Democratic-Republicans. Although he was not the founder of Tammany Hall, he

began the construction of the political machine upon which the power of

that organization is based. In the election of 1800 he was placed on the

Democratic-Republican presidential ticket with Thomas Jefferson, and each

received the same number of electoral votes. It was well understood that

the party intended that Jefferson should be president and Burr

vice-president, but owing to a defect (later remedied) in the Constitution

the responsibility for the final choice was thrown upon the House of

Representatives. The attempts of a powerful faction among the Federalists

to secure the election of Burr failed, partly because of the opposition of

Alexander Hamilton and partly, it would seem, because Burr himself would

make no efforts to obtain votes in his own favour. On Jefferson's election,

Burr of course became vice-president. His fair and judicial manner as

president of the Senate, recognized even by his bitterest enemies, helped

to foster traditions in regard to that position quite different from those

which have become associated with the speakership of the House of

Representatives.

Hamilton had opposed Burr's aspirations for the vice-presidency in 1792,

and had exerted influence through Washington to prevent his appointment as

brigadier-general in 1798, at the time of the threatened war between the

United States and France. It was also in a measure his efforts which led to

Burr's lack of success in the New York gubernatorial campaign of 1804;

moreover the two had long been rivals at the bar. Smarting under defeat and

angered by Hamilton's criticisms, Burr sent the challenge which resulted in

the famous duel at Weehawken, N.J., on the 11th of July 1804, and the death

of Hamilton (_q.v._) on the following day. After the expiration of his term

as vice-president (March 4, 1805), broken in fortune and virtually an exile

from New York, where, as in New Jersey, he had been indicted for murder

after the duel with Hamilton, Burr visited the South-west and became

involved in the so-called conspiracy which has so puzzled the students of

that period. The traditional view that he planned a separation of the West

from the Union is now discredited. Apart from the question of political

morality he could not, as a shrewd politician, have failed to see that the

people of that section were too loyal to sanction such a scheme. The

objects of his treasonable correspondence with Merry and Yrujo, the British

and Spanish ministers at Washington, were, it would seem, to secure money

and to conceal his real designs, which were probably to overthrow Spanish

power in the Southwest, and perhaps to found an imperial dynasty in Mexico.

He was arrested in 1807 on the charge of treason, was brought to trial

before the United States circuit court at Richmond, Virginia, Chief-Justice

Marshall presiding, and he was acquitted, in spite of the fact that the

political influence of the national administration was thrown against him.

Immediately afterward he was tried on a charge of misdemeanour, and on a

technicality was again acquitted. He lived abroad from 1808 to 1812,

passing most of his time in England, Scotland, Denmark, Sweden and France;

trying to secure aid in the prosecution of his filibustering schemes but

meeting with numerous rebuffs, being ordered out of England and Napoleon

refusing to receive him. In 1812 he returned to New York and spent the

remainder of his life in the practice of law. Burr was unscrupulous,

insincere and notoriously immoral, but he was pleasing in his manners,

generous to a fault, and was intensely devoted to his wife and daughter. In

1833 he married Eliza B. Jumel (1769-1865), a rich New York widow; the two

soon separated, however, owing to Burr's having lost much of her fortune in

speculation. He died at Port Richmond, Staten Island, New York, on the 14th

of September 1836.

The standard biography is James Parton's _The Life and Times of Aaron Burr_

(first edition, 1857; enlarged edition, 2 vols., Boston and New York,

1898). W.F. McCaleb's _The Aaron Burr Conspiracy_ (New York, 1903) is a

scholarly defence of the West and incidentally of Burr against the charge

of treason, and is the best account of the subject; see also I. Jenkinson,

_Aaron Burr_ (Richmond, Ind., 1902). For the traditional view of Burr's

conspiracy, see Henry Adams's _History of the United States_, vol. iii.

(New York, 1890).

BURRIANA, a seaport of eastern Spain, in the province of Castellón de la

Plana; on the estuary of the river Séco, which flows into the Mediterranean

Sea. Pop. (1900) 12,962. The harbour of Burriana on the open sea is

annually visited by about three hundred small coasting-vessels. Its exports

consist chiefly of oranges grown in the surrounding fertile plain, which is

irrigated with water from the river Mijares, on the north, and also

produces large quantities of grain, oil, wine and melons. Burriana is

connected by a light railway with the neighbouring towns of Onda (6595),

Almazóra (7070), Villarreal (16,068) and Castellón de la Plana (29,904).

Its nearest station on the Barcelona-Valencia coast railway is Villarreal.

BURRITT, ELIHU (1810-1879), American philanthropist, known as "the learned

blacksmith," was born in New Britain, Conn., on the 8th of December 1810.

His father (a farmer and shoemaker), and his grandfather, both of the same

name, had served in the Revolutionary army. An elder brother, Elijah, who

afterwards published _The Geography of the Heavens_ and other text-books,

went out into the world while Elihu was still a boy, and after editing a

paper in Georgia came back to New Britain and started a school. Elihu,

however, had to pick up what knowledge he could get from books at home,

where his father's long illness, ending in death, made his services

necessary. At sixteen he was apprenticed to a blacksmith, and he made this

his trade both there and at Worcester, Mass., where he removed in 1837. He

had a passion for reading; from the village library he borrowed book after

book, which he studied at his forge or in his spare hours; and he managed

to find time for attending his brother's school for a while, and even for

pursuing his search for culture among the advantages to be found at New

Haven. He mastered Latin, Greek, French, Spanish, Italian and German, and

by the age of thirty could read nearly fifty languages. His extraordinary

aptitude gradually made him famous. He took to lecturing, and then to an

ardent crusade on behalf of universal peace and human brotherhood, which

made him travel persistently to various parts of the United States and

Europe. In 1848 he organized the Brussels congress of Friends of Peace,

which was followed by annual congresses in Paris, Frankfort, London,

Manchester and Edinburgh. He wrote and published voluminously, leaflets,

pamphlets and volumes, and started the _Christian Citizen_ at Worcester to

advocate his humanitarian views. Cheap trans-oceanic postage was an ideal

for which he agitated wherever he went. His vigorous philanthropy keeps the

name of Elihu Burritt green in the history of the peace movement, apart

from the fame of his learning. His countrymen, at universities such as Yale

and elsewhere, delighted to do him honour; and he was U.S. consul at

Birmingham from 1865 to 1870. He returned to America and died at New

Britain on the 9th of March 1879.

See _Life_, by Charles Northend, in the memorial volume (1879); and an

article by Ellen Strong Bartlett in the _New England Magazine_ (June,

1897).

BURROUGHS, GEORGE (c. 1650-1692), American congregational pastor, graduated

at Harvard in 1670, and became the minister of Salem Village (now Danvers)

in 1680, a charge which he held till 1683. He lived at Falmouth (now

Portland, Maine) until the Indians destroyed it in 1690, when he removed to

Wells. In May 1692 during the witchcraft delusion, on the accusation of

some personal enemies in his former congregation who had sued him for debt,

Burroughs was arrested and charged, among other offences, with

"extraordinary Lifting and such feats of strength as could not be done

without Diabolicall Assistance." Though the jury found no witch-marks on

his body he was convicted and executed on Gallows Hill, Salem, on the 19th

of August, the only minister who suffered this extreme fate.

[v.04 p.0863] BURROUGHS, JOHN (1837- ), American poet and writer on natural

history, was born in Roxbury, Delaware county, New York, on the 3rd of

April 1837. In his earlier years he engaged in various pursuits, teaching,

journalism, farming and fruit-raising, and for nine years was a clerk in

the treasury department at Washington. After publishing in 1867 a volume of

_Notes on Walt Whitman as poet and person_ (a subject to which he returned

in 1896 with his _Whitman: a Study_), he began in 1871, with _Wake-Robin_,

a series of books on birds, flowers and rural scenes which has made him the

successor of Thoreau as a popular essayist en the plants and animals

environing human life. His later writings showed a more philosophic mood

and a greater disposition towards literary or meditative allusion than

their predecessors, but the general theme and method remained the same. His

chief books, in addition to _Wake-Robin_, are _Birds and Poets_ (1877),

_Locusts and Wild Honey_ (1879), _Signs and Seasons_ (1886), and _Ways of

Nature_ (1905); these are in prose, but he wrote much also in verse, a

volume of poems, _Bird and Bough_, being published in 1906. _Winter

Sunshine_ (1875) and _Fresh Fields_ (1884) are sketches of travel in

England and France.

A biographical sketch of Burroughs is prefixed to his _Year in the Fields_

(new ed., 1901). A complete uniform edition of his works was issued in

1895, &c. (Riverside edition, Cambridge, Mass.).

BURSAR (Med. Lat. _bursarius_), literally a keeper of the _bursa_ or purse.

The word is now chiefly used of the official, usually one of the fellows,

who administers the finances of a college at a university, or of the

treasurer of a school or other institution. The term is also applied to the

holder of "a bursary," an exhibition at Scottish schools or universities,

and also in England a scholarship or exhibition enabling a pupil of an

elementary school to continue his education at a secondary school. The term

"burse" (Lat. _bursa_, Gr. [Greek: borsa], bag of skin) is particularly

used of the embroidered purse which is one of the insignia of office of the

lord high chancellor of England, and of the pouch which in the Roman Church

contains the "corporal" in the service of the Mass. The "bursa" is a square

case opening at one side only and covered and lined with silk or linen; one

side should be of the colour of the vestments of the day.

BURSCHENSCHAFT, an association of students at the German universities. It

was formed as a result of the German national sentiment awakened by the War

of Liberation, its object being to foster patriotism and Christian conduct,

as opposed to the particularism and low moral standard of the old

_Landsmannschaften_. It originated at Jena, under the patronage of the

grand-duke of Saxe-Weimar, and rapidly spread, the _Allgemeine deutsche

Burschenschaft_ being established in 1818. The loud political idealism of

the _Burschen_ excited the fears of the reactionary powers, which

culminated after the murder of Kotzebue (_q.v._) by Karl Sand in 1819, a

crime inspired by a secret society among the _Burschen_ known as the Blacks

(_Schwarzen_). The repressive policy embodied in the Carlsbad Decrees

(_q.v._) was therefore directed mainly against the _Burschenschaft_, which

none the less survived to take part in the revolutions of 1830. After the

_émeute_ at Frankfort in 1833, the association was again suppressed, but it

lived on until, in 1848, all laws against it were abrogated. The

_Burschenschaften_ are now purely social and non-political societies. The

_Reformburschenschaften_, formed since 1883 on the principle of excluding

duelling, are united in the _Allgemeiner deutscher Burschenbund_.

BURSIAN, CONRAD (1830-1883), German philologist and archaeologist, was born

at Mutzschen in Saxony, on the 14th of November 1830. On the removal of his

parents to Leipzig, he received his early education at the Thomas school,

and entered the university in 1847. Here he studied under Moritz Haupt and

Otto Jahn until 1851, spent six months in Berlin (chiefly to attend Böckh's

lectures), and completed his university studies at Leipzig (1852). The next

three years were devoted to travelling in Belgium, France, Italy and

Greece. In 1856 he became a _Privat-docent_, and in 1858 extraordinary

professor at Leipzig; in 1861 professor of philology and archaeology at

Tübingen; in 1864 professor of classical antiquities at Zurich; in 1869 at

Jena, where he was also director of the archaeological museum; in 1874 at

Munich, where he remained until his death on the 21st of September 1883.

His most important works are: _Geographie von Griechenland_ (1862-1872);

_Beiträge zur Geschichte der klassischen Studien im Mittelalter_ (1873);

_Geschichte der klassischen Philologie in Deutschland_ (1883); editions of

Julius Firmicus Maternus' _De Errore Profanarum Religionum_ (1856) and of

Seneca's _Suasoriae_ (1857). The article on Greek Art in Ersch and Gruber's

Encyclopaedia is by him. Probably the work in connexion with which he is

best known is the _Jahresbericht über die Fortschritte der klassischen

Altertumswissenschaft_ (1873, &c.), of which he was the founder and editor;

from 1879 a _Biographisches Jahrbuch für Altertumskunde_ was published by

way of supplement, an obituary notice of Bursian, with a complete list of

his writings, being in the volume for 1884.

BURSLEM, a market town of Staffordshire, England, in the Potteries

district, 150 m. N.W. from London, on the North Staffordshire railway and

the Grand Trunk Canal. Pop. (1891) 31,999; (1901) 38,766. In the 17th

century the town was already famous for its manufacture of pottery. Here

Josiah Wedgwood was born in 1730, his family having practised the

manufacture in this locality for several generations, while he himself

began work independently at the Ivy House pottery in 1759. He is

commemorated by the Wedgwood Institute, founded in 1863. It comprises a

school of art, free library, museum, picture-gallery and the free school

founded in 1794. The exterior is richly and peculiarly ornamented, to show

the progress of fictile art. The neighbouring towns of Stoke, Hanley and

Longton are connected with Burslem by tramways. Burslem is mentioned in

Domesday. Previously to 1885 it formed part of the parliamentary borough of

Stoke, but it is now included in that of Hanley. It was included in the

municipal borough of Stoke-on-Trent under an act of 1908.

BURTON, SIR FREDERICK WILLIAM (1816-1900), British painter and art

connoisseur, the third son of Samuel Burton of Mungret, Co. Limerick, was

born in Ireland in 1816. He was educated in Dublin, where his artistic

studies were carried on with marked success under the direction of Mr

Brocas, an able teacher, who foretold for the lad a distinguished career.

That this estimate was not exaggerated was proved by Burton's immediate

success in his profession. He was elected an associate of the Royal

Hibernian Academy at the age of twenty-one and an academician two years

later; and in 1842 he began to exhibit at the Royal Academy. A visit to

Germany and Bavaria in 1851 was the first of a long series of wanderings in

various parts of Europe, which gave him a profound and intimate knowledge

of the works of the Old Masters, and prepared him admirably for the duties

that he undertook in 1874 when he was appointed director of the British

National Gallery in succession to Sir W. Boxall, R.A. During the twenty

years that he held this post he was responsible for many important

purchases, among them Leonardo da Vinci's "Virgin of the Rocks," Raphael's

"Ansidei Madonna," Holbein's "Ambassadors," Van Dyck's equestrian portrait

of Charles I., and the "Admiral Pulido Pareja," by Velasquez; and he added

largely to the noted series of Early Italian pictures in the gallery. The

number of acquisitions made to the collection during his period of office

amounts to not fewer than 500. His own painting, most of which was in

water-colour, had more attraction for experts than for the general public.

He was elected an associate of the Royal Society of Painters in

Water-Colours in 1855, and a full member in the following year. He resigned

in 1870, and was re-elected as an honorary member in 1886. A knighthood was

conferred on him in 1884, and the degree of LL.D. of Dublin in 1889. In his

youth he had strong sympathy with the "Young Ireland Party," and was a

close associate with some of its members. He died in Kensington on the 16th

of March 1900.

BURTON, JOHN HILL (1809-1881), Scottish historical writer, the son of an

officer in the army, was born at Aberdeen on the 22nd of August 1809. After

studying at the university of his native city, he removed to Edinburgh,

where he qualified for [v.04 p.0864] the Scottish bar and practised as an

advocate; but his progress was slow, and he eked out his narrow means by

miscellaneous literary work. His _Manual of the Law of Scotland_ (1839)

brought him into notice; he joined Sir John Bowring in editing the works of

Jeremy Bentham, and for a short time was editor of the _Scotsman_, which he

committed to the cause of free trade. In 1846 he achieved high reputation

by his _Life of David Hume_, based upon extensive and unused MS. material.

In 1847 he wrote his biographies of Simon, Lord Lovat, and of Duncan

Forbes, and in 1849 prepared for Chambers's Series manuals of political and

social economy and of emigration. In the same year he lost his wife, whom

he had married in 1844, and never again mixed freely with society, though

in 1855 he married again. He devoted himself mainly to literature,

contributing largely to the _Scotsman_ and _Blackwood_, writing _Narratives

from Criminal Trials in Scotland_ (1852), _Treatise on the Law of

Bankruptcy in Scotland_ (1853), and publishing in the latter year the first

volume of his _History of Scotland_, which was completed in 1870. A new and

improved edition of the work appeared in 1873. Some of the more important

of his contributions to _Blackwood_ were embodied in two delightful

volumes, _The Book Hunter_ (1862) and _The Scot Abroad_ (1864). He had in

1854 been appointed secretary to the prison board, an office which gave him

entire pecuniary independence, and the duties of which he discharged most

assiduously, notwithstanding his literary pursuits and the pressure of

another important task assigned to him after the completion of his history,

the editorship of the _National Scottish Registers_. Two volumes were

published under his supervision. His last work, _The History of the Reign

of Queen Anne_ (1880), is very inferior to his _History of Scotland_. He

died on the 10th of August 1881. Burton was pre-eminently a jurist and

economist, and may be said to have been guided by accident into the path

which led him to celebrity. It was his great good fortune to find abundant

unused material for his _Life of Hume_, and to be the first to introduce

the principles of historical research into the history of Scotland. All

previous attempts had been far below the modern standard in these

particulars, and Burton's history will always be memorable as marking an

epoch. His chief defects as a historian are want of imagination and an

undignified familiarity of style, which, however, at least preserves his

history from the dulness by which lack of imagination is usually

accompanied. His dryness is associated with a fund of dry humour

exceedingly effective in its proper place, as in _The Book Hunter_. As a

man he was loyal, affectionate, philanthropic and entirely estimable.

A memoir of Hill Burton by his wife was prefaced to an edition of _The Book

Hunter_, which like his other works was published at Edinburgh (1882).

(R. G.)

BURTON, SIR RICHARD FRANCIS (1821-1890), British consul, explorer and

Orientalist, was born at Barham House, Hertfordshire, on the 19th of March

1821. He came of the Westmorland Burtons of Shap, but his grandfather, the

Rev. Edward Burton, settled in Ireland as rector of Tuam, and his father,

Lieutenant-Colonel Joseph Netterville Burton, of the 36th Regiment, was an

Irishman by birth and character. His mother was descended from the

MacGregors, and he was proud of a remote drop of Bourbon blood piously

believed to be derived from a morganatic union of the Grand Monarque. There

were even those, including some of the Romany themselves, who saw gipsy

written in his peculiar eyes as in his character, wild and resentful,

essentially vagabond, intolerant of convention and restraint. His irregular

education strengthened the inherited bias. A childhood spent in France and

Italy, under scarcely any control, fostered the love of untrammelled

wandering and a marvellous fluency in continental vernaculars. Such an

education so little prepared him for academic proprieties, that when he

entered Trinity College, Oxford, in October 1840, a criticism of his

military moustache by a fellow-undergraduate was resented by a challenge to

a duel, and Burton in various ways distinguished himself by such eccentric

behaviour that rustication inevitably ensued. Nor was he much more in his

element as a subaltern in the 18th Regiment of Bombay Native Infantry,

which he joined at Baroda in October 1842. Discipline of any sort he

abhorred, and the one recommendation of the East India Company's service in

his eyes was that it offered opportunities for studying Oriental life and

languages. He had begun Arabic without a master at Oxford, and worked in

London at Hindustani under Forbes before he went out; in India he laboured

indefatigably at the vernaculars, and his reward was an astonishingly rapid

proficiency in Gujarati, Marathi, Hindustani, as well as Persian and

Arabic. His appointment as an assistant in the Sind survey enabled him to

mix with the people, and he frequently passed as a native in the bazaars

and deceived his own _munshi_, to say nothing of his colonel and messmates.

His wanderings in Sind were the apprenticeship for the pilgrimage to Mecca,

and his seven years in India laid the foundations of his unparalleled

familiarity with Eastern life and customs, especially among the lower

classes. Besides government reports and contributions to the Asiatic

Society, his Indian period produced four books, published after his return

home: _Scinde, or the Unhappy Valley_ (1851), _Sindh and the Races that

Inhabit the Valley of the Indus_ (1851), _Goa and the Blue Mountains_

(1851), and _Falconry in the Valley of the Indus_ (1852). None of these

achieved popularity, but the account of Sind is remarkably vivid and

faithful.

The pilgrimage to Mecca in 1853 made Burton famous. He had planned it

whilst mixing disguised among the Muslims of Sind, and had laboriously

prepared for the ordeal by study and practice. No doubt the primary motive

was the love of adventure, which was his strongest passion; but along with

the wanderer's restlessness marched the zest of exploration, and whilst

wandering was in any case a necessity of his existence, he preferred to

roam in untrodden ways where mere adventure might be dignified by

geographical service. There was a "huge white blot" on the maps of central

Arabia where no European had ever been, and Burton's scheme, approved by

the Royal Geographical Society, was to extend his pilgrimage to this "empty

abode," and remove a discreditable blank from the map. War among the tribes

curtailed the design, and his journey went no farther than Medina and

Mecca. The exploit of accompanying the Muslim hajj to the holy cities was

not unique, nor so dangerous as has been imagined. Several Europeans have

accomplished it before and since Burton's visit without serious mishap.

Passing himself off as an Indian Pathan covered any peculiarities or

defects of speech. The pilgrimage, however, demands an intimate proficiency

in a complicated ritual, and a familiarity with the minutiae of Eastern

manners and etiquette; and in the case of a stumble, presence of mind and

cool courage may be called into request. There are legends that Burton had

to defend his life by taking others'; but he carried no arms, and

confessed, rather shamefastly, that he had never killed anybody at any

time. The actual journey was less remarkable than the book in which it was

recorded, _The Pilgrimage to Al-Medinah and Meccah_ (1855). Its vivid

descriptions, pungent style, and intensely personal "note" distinguish it

from books of its class; its insight into Semitic modes of thought and its

picture of Arab manners give it the value of an historical document; its

grim humour, keen observation and reckless insobriety of opinion, expressed

in peculiar, uncouth but vigorous language make it a curiosity of

literature.

Burton's next journey was more hazardous than the pilgrimage, but created

no parallel sensation. In 1854 the Indian government accepted his proposal

to explore the interior of the Somali country, which formed a subject of

official anxiety in its relation to the Red Sea trade. He was assisted by

Capt. J.H. Speke and two other young officers, but accomplished the most

difficult part of the enterprise alone. This was the journey to Harrar, the

Somali capital, which no white man had entered. Burton vanished into the

desert, and was not heard of for four months. When he reappeared he had not

only been to Harrar, but had talked with the king, stayed ten days there in

deadly peril, and ridden back across the desert, almost without food and

water, running the gauntlet of the Somali spears all the way. Undeterred by

this experience he set out again, but was checked [v.04 p.0865] by a

skirmish with the tribes, in which one of his young officers was killed,

Captain Speke was wounded in eleven places, and Burton himself had a

javelin thrust through his jaws. His _First Footsteps in East Africa_

(1856), describing these adventures, is one of his most exciting and most

characteristic books, full of learning, observation and humour.

After serving on the staff of Beatson's Bashi-bazouks at the Dardanelles,

but never getting to the front in the Crimea, Burton returned to Africa in

1856. The foreign office, moved by the Royal Geographical Society,

commissioned him to search for the sources of the Nile, and, again

accompanied by Speke, he explored the lake regions of equatorial Africa.

They discovered Lake Tanganyika in February 1858, and Speke, pushing on

during Burton's illness and acting on indications supplied by him, lighted

upon Victoria Nyanza. The separate discovery led to a bitter dispute, but

Burton's expedition, with its discovery of the two lakes, was the incentive

to the later explorations of Speke and Grant, Baker, Livingstone and

Stanley; and his report in volume xxxiii. of the _Proceedings of the Royal

Geographical Society_, and his _Lake Regions of Equatorial Africa_ (1860),

are the true parents of the multitudinous literature of "darkest Africa."

Burton was the first Englishman to enter Mecca, the first to explore

Somaliland, the first to discover the great lakes of Central Africa. His

East African pioneering coincides with areas which have since become

peculiarly interesting to the British Empire; and three years later he was

exploring on the opposite side of Africa, at Dahomey, Benin and the Gold

Coast, regions which have also entered among the imperial "questions" of

the day. Before middle age Burton had compressed into his life, as Lord

Derby said, "more of study, more of hardship, and more of successful

enterprise and adventure, than would have sufficed to fill up the existence

of half a dozen ordinary men." _The City of the Saints_ (1861) was the

fruit of a flying visit to the United States in 1860.

Since 1849 his connexion with the Indian army had been practically severed;

in 1861 he definitely entered the service of the foreign office as consul

at Fernando Po, whence he was shifted successively to Santos in Brazil

(1865), Damascus (1869), and Trieste (1871), holding the last post till his

death on the 20th of October 1890. Each of these posts produced its

corresponding books: Fernando Po led to the publishing of _Wanderings in

West Africa_ (1863), _Abeokuta and the Cameroons_ (1863), _A Mission to

Gelele, king of Dahomé_ (1864), and _Wit and Wisdom from West Africa_

(1865). The _Highlands of the Brazil_ (1869) was the result of four years'

residence and travelling; and _Letters from the Battlefields of Paraguay_

(1870) relate to a journey across South America to Peru. Damascus suggested

_Unexplored Syria_ (1872), and might have led to much better work, since no

consulate in either hemisphere was more congenial to Burton's taste and

linguistic studies; but he mismanaged his opportunities, got into trouble

with the foreign office, and was removed to Trieste, where his Oriental

prepossessions and prejudices could do no harm, but where, unfortunately,

his Oriental learning was thrown away. He did not, however, abandon his

Eastern studies or his Eastern travels. Various fresh journeys or

revisitings of familiar scenes are recorded in his later books, such as

_Zanzibar_ (1872), _Ultima Thule_ (1875), _Etruscan Bologna_ (1876), _Sind

Revisited_ (1877), _The Land of Midian_ (1879) and _To the Gold Coast for

Gold_ (1883). None of these had more than a passing interest. Burton had

not the charm of style or imagination which gives immortality to a book of

travel. He wrote too fast, and took too little pains about the form. His

blunt, disconnected sentences and ill-constructed chapters were full of

information and learning, and contained not a few thrusts for the benefit

of government or other people, but they were not "readable." There was

something ponderous about his very humour, and his criticism was personal

and savage. By far the most celebrated of all his books is the translation

of the "Arabian Nights" (_The Thousand Nights and a Night_, 16 vols.,

privately printed, 1885-1888), which occupied the greater part of his

leisure at Trieste. As a monument of his Arabic learning and his

encyclopaedic knowledge of Eastern life this translation was his greatest

achievement. It is open to criticism in many ways; it is not so exact in

scholarship, nor so faithful to its avowed text, as might be expected from

his reputation; but it reveals a profound acquaintance with the vocabulary

and customs of the Muslims, with their classical idiom as well as their

vulgarest "Billingsgate," with their philosophy and modes of thought as

well as their most secret and most disgusting habits. Burton's

"anthropological notes," embracing a wide field of pornography, apart from

questions of taste, abound in valuable observations based upon long study

of the manners and the writings of the Arabs. The translation itself is

often marked by extraordinary resource and felicity in the exact

reproduction of the sense of the original; Burton's vocabulary was

marvellously extensive, and he had a genius for hitting upon the right

word; but his fancy for archaic words and phrases, his habit of coining

words, and the harsh and rugged style he affected, detract from the

literary quality of the work without in any degree enhancing its fidelity.

With grave defects, but sometimes brilliant merits, the translation holds a

mirror to its author. He was, as has been well said, an Elizabethan born

out of time; in the days of Drake his very faults might have counted to his

credit. Of his other works, _Vikram and the Vampire, Hindu Tales_ (1870),

and a history of his favourite arm, _The Book of the Sword_, vol. i.

(1884), unfinished, may be mentioned. His translation of _The Lusiads of

Camoens_ (1880) was followed (1881) by a sketch of the poet's life. Burton

had a fellow-feeling for the poet adventurer, and his translation is an

extraordinarily happy reproduction of its original. A manuscript

translation of the "Scented Garden," from the Arabic, was burnt by his

widow, acting in what she believed to be the interests of her husband's

reputation. Burton married Isabel Arundell in 1861, and owed much to her

courage, sympathy and passionate devotion. Her romantic and exaggerated

biography of her husband, with all its faults, is one of the most pathetic

monuments which the unselfish love of a woman has ever raised to the memory

of her hero. Another monument is the Arab tent of stone and marble which

she built for his tomb at Mortlake.

Besides Lady Burton's _Life of Sir Richard F. Burton_ (2 vols., 1893, 2nd

edition, condensed, edited, with a preface, by W.H. Wilkins, 1898), there

are _A Sketch of the Career of R.F. Burton_, by A.B. Richards, Andrew

Wilson, and St Clair Baddeley (1886); _The True Life of Captain Sir Richard

F. Burton_, by his niece, G.M. Stisted (1896); and a brief sketch by the

present writer prefixed to Bohn's edition of the _Pilgrimage to Al-Medinah

and Meccah_ (1898), from which some sentences have here been by permission

reproduced. In 1906 appeared the _Life of Sir Richard Burton_, by Thomas

Wright of Olney, in two volumes, an industrious and rather critical work,

interesting in particular for the doubts it casts on Burton's originality

as an Arabic translator, and emphasizing his indebtedness to Payne's

translation (1881) of the _Arabian Nights_.

(S. L.-P.)

BURTON, ROBERT (1577-1640), English writer, author of _The Anatomy of

Melancholy_, son of a country gentleman, Ralph Burton, was born at Lindley

in Leicestershire on the 8th of February 1576-7. He was educated at the

free school of Sutton Coldfield and at Nuneaton grammar school; became in

1593 a commoner of Brasenose College, and in 1599 was elected student at

Christ Church, where he continued to reside for the rest of his life. The

dean and chapter of Christ Church appointed him, in November 1616, vicar of

St Thomas in the west suburbs, and about 1630 his patron, Lord Berkeley,

presented him to the rectory of Segrave in Leicestershire. He held the two

livings "with much ado to his dying day" (says Antony à Wood, the Oxford

historian, somewhat mysteriously); and he was buried in the north aisle of

Christ Church cathedral, where his elder brother William Burton, author of

a _History of Leicestershire_, raised to his memory a monument, with his

bust in colour. The epitaph that he had written for himself was carved

beneath the bust: _Paucis notus, paucioribus ignotus, hic jacet Democritus

Junior, cui vitam dedit et mortem Melancholia_. Some years before his death

he had predicted, by the calculation of his nativity, that the approach of

his climacteric year (sixty-three) would prove fatal; and the prediction

came true, for he died on the 25th of January 1639-40 (some gossips

surmising that he had "sent up his soul to heaven through a noose about his

neck" to avoid the chagrin of seeing his calculations falsified). His [v.04

p.0866] portrait in Brasenose College shows the face of a scholar, shrewd,

contemplative, humorous.

A Latin comedy, _Philosophaster_, originally written by Robert Burton in

1606 and acted at Christ Church in 1617, was long supposed to be lost; but

in 1862 it was printed for the Roxburghe Club from a manuscript belonging

to the Rev. W.E. Buckley, who edited it with elaborate care and appended a

collection of the academical exercises that Burton had contributed to

various Oxford miscellanies ("Natalia," "Parentalia," &c.).

_Philosophaster_ is a vivacious exposure of charlatanism. Desiderius, duke

of Osuna, invites learned men from all parts of Europe to repair to the

university which he has re-established; and a crowd of shifty adventurers

avail themselves of the invitation. There are points of resemblance to

_Philosophaster_ in Ben Jonson's _Alchemist_ and Tomkis's _Albumazar_, but

in the prologue Burton is careful to state that his was the earlier play.

(Another manuscript of _Philosophaster_, a presentation copy to William

Burton from the author, has since been found in the library of Lord

Mostyn.)

In 1621 was issued at Oxford the first edition, a quarto, of _The Anatomy

of Melancholy ... by Democritus Junior_. Later editions, in folio, were

published in 1624, 1628, 1632, 1638, 1651, 1652, 1660, 1676. Burton was for

ever engaged in revising his treatise. In the third edition (where first

appeared the engraved emblematical title-page by C. Le Blond) he declared

that he would make no further alterations. But the fourth edition again

bore marks of revision; the fifth differed from the fourth; and the sixth

edition was posthumously printed from a copy containing his latest

corrections.

Not the least interesting part of the _Anatomy_ is the long preface,

"Democritus to the Reader," in which Burton sets out his reasons for

writing the treatise and for assuming the name of Democritus Junior. He had

been elected a student of "the most flourishing college of Europe" and he

designed to show his gratitude by writing something that should be worthy

of that noble society. He had read much; he was neither rich nor poor;

living in studious seclusion, he had been a critically observant spectator

of the world's affairs. The philosopher Democritus, who was by nature very

melancholy, "averse from company in his latter days and much given to

solitariness," spent his closing years in the suburbs of Abdera. There

Hippocrates once found him studying in his garden, the subject of his study

being the causes and cure of "this _atra bilis_ or melancholy." Burton

would not compare himself with so famous a philosopher, but he aimed at

carrying out the design which Democritus had planned and Hippocrates had

commended. It is stated that he actually set himself to reproduce the old

philosopher's reputed eccentricities of conduct. When he was attacked by a

fit of melancholy he would go to the bridge foot at Oxford and shake his

sides with laughter to hear the bargemen swearing at one another, just as

Democritus used to walk down to the haven at Abdera and pick matter for

mirth out of the humours of waterside life.

Burton anticipates the objections of captious critics. He allows that he

has "collected this cento out of divers authors" and has borrowed from

innumerable books, but he claims that "the composition and method is ours

only, and shows a scholar." It had been his original intention to write in

Latin, but no publisher would take the risk of issuing in Latin so

voluminous a treatise. He humorously apologizes for faults of style on the

ground that he had to work single-handed (unlike Origen who was allowed by

Ambrosius six or seven amanuenses) and digest his notes as best he might.

If any object to his choice of subject, urging that he would be better

employed in writing on divinity, his defence is that far too many

commentaries, expositions, sermons, &c., are already in existence. Besides,

divinity and medicine are closely allied; and, melancholy being both a

spiritual and bodily infirmity, the divine and the physician must unite to

cure it.

The preface is followed by a tabular synopsis of the First Partition with

its several Sections, Members and Subsections. After various preliminary

digressions Burton sets himself to define what Melancholy is and what are

its species and kinds. Then he discusses the Causes, supernatural and

natural, of the disorder, and afterwards proceeds to set down the Symptoms

(which cannot be briefly summarized, "for the Tower of Babel never yielded

such confusion of tongues as the Chaos of Melancholy doth of Symptoms").

The Second Partition is devoted to the Cure of Melancholy. As it is of

great importance that we should live in good air, a chapter deals with "Air

Rectified. With a Digression of the Air." Burton never travelled, but the

study of cosmography had been his constant delight; and over sea and land,

north, east, west, south--in this enchanting chapter--he sends his vagrant

fancy flying. In the disquisition on "Exercise rectified of body and mind"

he dwells gleefully on the pleasures of country life, and on the content

that scholars find in the pursuit of their favourite studies.

Love-Melancholy is the subject of the first Three Sections of the Third

Partition, and many are the merry tales with which these pages are

seasoned. The Fourth (and concluding) Section treats, in graver mood, of

Religious Melancholy; and to the "Cure of Despair" he devotes his deepest

meditations.

_The Anatomy_, widely read in the 17th century, for a time lapsed into

obscurity, though even "the wits of Queen Anne's reign and the beginning of

George I. were not a little beholden to Robert Burton" (Archbishop

Herring). Dr Johnson deeply admired the work; and Sterne laid it heavily

under contribution. But the noble and impassioned devotion of Charles Lamb

has been the most powerful help towards keeping alive the memory of the

"fantastic great old man." Burton's odd turns and quirks of expression, his

whimsical and affectate fancies, his kindly sarcasm, his far-fetched

conceits, his deep-lying pathos, descended by inheritance of genius to

Lamb. The enthusiasm of Burton's admirers will not be chilled by the

disparagement of unsympathetic critics (Macaulay and Hallam among them) who

have consulted his pages in vain; but through good and evil report he will

remain, their well-loved companion to the end.

The best of the modern editions of Burton was published in 1896, 3 vols.

8vo (Bell and Sons), under the editorship of A.R. Shilleto, who identified

a large number of the classical quotations and many passages from

post-classical authors. Prof. Bensley, of the university of Adelaide, has

since contributed to the ninth and tenth series of _Notes and Queries_ many

valuable notes on the _Anatomy_. Dr Aldis Wright has long been engaged on

the preparation of a definitive edition.

(A. H. B.)

BURTON, WILLIAM EVANS (1804-1860), English actor and playwright, born in

London in September 1804, was the son of William George Burton (1774-1825),

a printer and author of _Research into the religions of the Eastern nations

as illustrative of the scriptures_ (1805). He was educated for the Church,

but, having entered his father's business, his success as an amateur actor

led him to go upon the stage. After several years in the provinces, he made

his first London appearance in 1831. In 1834 he went to America, where he

appeared in Philadelphia as Dr Ollapod in _The Poor Gentleman_. He took a

prominent place, both as actor and manager, in New York, Philadelphia and

Baltimore, the theatre which he leased in New York being renamed Burton's

theatre. He had much popular success as Captain Cuttle in John Brougham's

dramatization of _Dombey and Son_, and in other low comedy parts in plays

from Dickens's novels. Burton was the author of a large number of plays,

one of which, _Ellen Wareham_ (1833), was produced simultaneously at five

London theatres. In Philadelphia he established the _Gentleman's Magazine_,

of which Edgar Allan Poe was for some time the editor. He was himself the

editor of the _Cambridge Quarterly_ and the _Souvenir_, and the author of

several books, including a _Cyclopaedia of Wit and Humour_ (1857). He

collected a library of over 100,000 volumes, especially rich in

Shakespeariana, which was dispersed after his death at New York City on the

9th of February 1860.

BURTON-UPON-TRENT, a market town and municipal and county borough in the

Burton parliamentary division of Staffordshire and the Southern

parliamentary division of Derbyshire, England; lying mainly upon the left

bank of the Trent, in Staffordshire. Pop. (1891) 46,047; (1901) 50,386. It

is 127 m [v.04 p.0867] north-west from London by the London & North-Western

and the Midland railways, and is also served by the Great Northern and

North Staffordshire railways. The Trent is navigable from a point near the

town downward. The neighbouring country is pleasant enough, particularly

along the river, but the town itself is purely industrial, and contains no

pre-eminent buildings. The church of St Mary and St Modwen is classic in

style, of the 18th century, but embodies some remains of an ancient Gothic

building. Of a Benedictine abbey dedicated to the same saints there remain

a gatehouse and lodge, and a fine doorway. The former abbot's house at

Seyney Park is a half-timbered building of the 15th century. The free

grammar school was founded in 1525. A fine bridge over the Trent, and the

municipal buildings, were provided by Lord Burton. There are pleasant

recreation grounds on the Derbyshire side of the river.

Burton is the seat of an enormous brewing trade, representing nearly

one-tenth of the total amount of this trade in the United Kingdom. It is

divided between some twenty firms. The premises of Bass's brewery extend

over 500 acres, while Allsopp's stand next; upwards of 5000 hands are

employed in all, and many miles of railways owned by the firms cross the

streets in all directions on the level, and connect with the lines of the

railway companies. The superiority which is claimed for Burton ales is

attributed to the use of well-water impregnated with sulphate of lime

derived from the gypseous deposits of the district. Burton is governed by a

mayor, 8 aldermen and 24 councillors. Area, 4202 acres.

Burton-upon-Trent (Burhton) is first mentioned towards the close of the 9th

century, when St Modwen, an Irish virgin, is said to have established a

convent on the Isle of Andressey opposite Burton. In 1002 Wulfric, earl of

Mercia, founded here a Benedictine abbey, and by charter of 1004 granted to

it the town with other large endowments. Burton was evidently a mesne

borough under the abbot, who held the court of the manor and received the

profits of the borough according to the charter of Henry I. granting sac

and soc and other privileges and right in the town. Later charters were

given by Henry II., by John in 1204 (who also granted an annual fair of

three days' duration, 29th of October, at the feast of St Modwen, and a

weekly market on Thursday), by Henry III. in 1227, by Henry VII. in 1488

(Henry VII. granted a fair at the feast of St Luke, 18th of October), and

by Henry VIII. in 1509. At the dissolution Henry VIII. founded on the site

of the abbey a collegiate church dissolved before 1545, when its lands,

with all the privileges formerly vested in the abbot, were conferred on Sir

William Paget, ancestor of the marquess of Anglesey, now holder of the

manor. In 1878 it was incorporated under a mayor, 8 aldermen, 24

councillors. Burton was the scene of several engagements in the Civil War,

when its large trade in clothing and alabaster was practically ruined.

Although the abbey ale was mentioned as early as 1295, the brewing industry

is comparatively of recent development, having begun about 1708. Forty

years later it had a market at St Petersburg and the Baltic ports, and in

1796 there were nine brewing firms in the town.

See William Molyneux, _History of Burton-on-Trent_ (1869); _Victoria County

History, Staffordshire_.

BURU (_Buro_, Dutch _Boeroe_ or _Boeloe_), an island of the Dutch East

Indies, one of the Molucca Islands belonging to the residency of Amboyna,

between 3° 4' and 3° 50' S. and 125° 58' and 127° 15' E. Its extreme

measurements are 87 m. by 50 m., and its area is 3400 sq. m. Its surface is

for the most part mountainous, though the seaboard district is frequently

alluvial and marshy from the deposits of the numerous rivers. Of these the

largest, the Kajeli, discharging eastward, is in part navigable. The

greatest elevations occur in the west, where the mountain Tomahu reaches

8530 ft. In the middle of the western part of the island lies the large

lake of Wakolo, at an altitude of 2200 ft., with a circumference of 37 m.

and a depth of about 100 ft. It has been considered a crater lake; but this

is not the case. It is situated at the junction of the sandstone and slate,

where the water, having worn away the former, has accumulated on the

latter. The lake has no affluents and only one outlet, the Wai Nibe to the

north. The chief geological formations of Buru are crystalline slate near

the north coast, and more to the south Mesozoic sandstone and chalk,

deposits of rare occurrence in the archipelago. By far the larger part of

the country is covered with natural forest and prairie land, but such

portions as have been brought into cultivation are highly fertile. Coffee,

rice and a variety of fruits, such as the lemon, orange, banana, pine-apple

and coco-nut are readily grown, as well as sago, red-pepper, tobacco and

cotton. The only important exports, however, are cajeput oil, a sudorific

distilled from the leaves of the _Melaleuca Cajuputi_ or white-wood tree;

and timber. The native flora is rich, and teak, ebony and canari trees are

especially abundant; the fauna, which is similarly varied, includes the

babirusa, which occurs in this island only of the Moluccas. The population

is about 15,000. The villages on the sea-coast are inhabited by a Malayan

population, and the northern and western portions of the island are

occupied by a light-coloured Malay folk akin to the natives of the eastern

Celebes. In the interior is found a peculiar race which is held by some to

be Papuan. They are described, however, as singularly un-Papuan in

physique, being only 5 ft. 2 in. in average height, of a yellow-brown

colour, of feeble build, and without the characteristic frizzly hair and

prominent nose of the true Papuan. They are completely pagan, live in

scattered hamlets, and have come very little in contact with any

civilization. Among the maritime population a small number of Chinese,

Arabs and other races are also found. The island is divided by the Dutch

into two districts. The chief settlement is Kajeli on the east coast. A

number of Mahommedan natives here are descended from tribes compelled in

1657 to gather together from the different parts of the island, while all

the clove-trees were exterminated in an attempt by the Dutch to centralize

the clove trade. Before the arrival of the Dutch the islanders were under

the dominion of the sultan of Ternate; and it was their rebellion against

him that gave the Europeans the opportunity of effecting their subjugation.

BURUJIRD, a province of Persia, bounded W. by Luristan, N. by Nehavend and

Malayir, E. by Irak and S. by Isfahan. It is divided into the following

administrative divisions:--(1) town of Burujird with villages in immediate

neighbourhood; (2) Silakhor (upper and lower); (3) Japalak (with Sarlek and

Burbarud); (4) nomad Bakhtiari. It has a population of about 250,000 or

300,000, and pays a yearly revenue of about £16,000. It is very fertile and

produces much wheat, barley, rice and opium. With improved means of

transport, which would allow the growers to export, the produce of cereals

could easily be trebled. The province is sometimes joined with that of

Luristan.

The town Burujird, the capital of the province, is situated in the fertile

Silakhor plain on the river Tah[=i]j, a tributary of the Dizful river (Ab i

Diz), 70 m. by road from Hamadan and 212 m. from Isfahan, in 33° 55' N. and

48° 55' E., and at an elevation of 5315 ft. Pop. about 25,000. It

manufactures various cotton stuffs (coarse prints, carpet covers) and felts

(principally hats and caps for Lurs and Bakhtiaris). It has post and

telegraph offices.

BURY, JOHN BAGNELL (1861- ), British historian, was born on the 16th of

October 1861, and was educated at Trinity College, Dublin, where he was

elected to a fellowship in 1885. A fine Greek scholar, he edited Pindar's

_Nemean_ and _Isthmian Odes_; but he devoted himself chiefly to the study

of history, and was chosen professor of modern history at Dublin in 1893,

becoming regius professor of Greek in 1898. He resigned both positions in

1902, when he was elected regius professor of modern history in the

university of Cambridge. His historical work was mainly concerned with the

later Roman empire, and his edition of Gibbon's _Decline and Fall_, with a

masterly introduction and valuable notes (1896-1900), is the standard text

of this history. He also wrote a _History of Greece to the Death of

Alexander the Great_ (1900); _History of the Later Roman Empire, 395-800_

(1889); _History of the Roman Empire 27 B.C.-180 A.D._ (1893); _Life of St

Patrick and his Place in History_ (1905), &c. He was elected a fellow of

King's College, Cambridge, and received honorary degrees from the

universities of Oxford, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Aberdeen and Durham.

BURY, a market-town and municipal, county and parliamentary borough of

Lancashire, England, on the river Irwell, [v.04 p.0868] 195 m. N.W. by W.

from London, and 10½ N. by W. from Manchester, on the Lancashire &

Yorkshire railway and the Manchester & Bolton canal. Pop. (1891) 57,212;

(1901) 58,029. The church of St Mary is of early foundation, but was

rebuilt in 1876. Besides numerous other places of worship, there are a

handsome town hall, athenaeum and museum, art gallery and public library,

various assembly rooms, and several recreation grounds. Kay's free grammar

school was founded in 1726; there are also municipal technical schools. The

cotton manufacture is the principal industry; there are also calico

printing, dyeing and bleaching works, machinery and iron works, woollen

manufactures, and coal mines and quarries in the vicinity. Sir Robert Peel

was born at Chamber Hall in the neighbourhood, and his father did much for

the prosperity of the town by the establishment of extensive print-works. A

monument to the statesman stands in the market-place. The parliamentary

borough returns one member (since 1832). The county borough was created in

1888. The corporation consists of a mayor, 10 aldermen and 30 councillors.

Area, 5836 acres.

Bury, of which the name is derived from the Anglo-Saxon _burhg_, _birig_ or

_byrig_ (town, castle or fortified place), was the site of a Saxon station,

and an old English castle stood in Castle Croft close to the town. It was a

member of the Honour of Clitheroe and a fee of the royal manor of

Tottington, which soon after the Conquest was held by the Lacys. The local

family of Bury held lands here during the 13th century, and at least for a

short time the manor itself, but before 1347 it passed by marriage to the

Pilkingtons of Pilkington, with whom it remained till 1485, when on the

attainder of Sir Thomas Pilkington it was granted to the first earl of

Derby, whose descendants have since held it. Under a grant made by Edward

IV. to Sir Thomas Pilkington, fairs are still held on March 5, May 3, and

September 18, and a market was formerly held under the same grant on

Thursday, which has, however, been long replaced by a customary market on

Saturday. The woollen trade was established here through the agency of

Flemish immigrants in Edward III.'s reign, and in Elizabeth's time this

industry was of such importance that an aulneger was appointed to measure

and stamp the woollen cloth. But although the woollen manufacture is still

carried on, the cotton trade has been gradually superseding it since the

early part of the 18th century. The family of the Kays, the inventors,

belonged to this place, and Robert Peel's print-works were established here

in 1770. The cognate trades of bleaching, dyeing and machine-making have

been long carried on. A court-leet and view of frank pledge used to be held

half-yearly at Easter and Michaelmas, and a court-baron in May. Until 1846

three constables were chosen annually at the court-leet to govern the

place, but in that year the inhabitants obtained authority from parliament

to appoint twenty-seven commissioners to undertake the local government. A

charter of incorporation was granted in 1876. The well-known Bury

Cooperative Society was established in 1856. There was a church here at the

time of the Domesday Survey, and the earliest mention of a rector is found

in the year 1331-1332. One-half of the town is glebe belonging to the

rectory.

BURY ST EDMUNDS, a market town and municipal and parliamentary borough of

Suffolk, England, on the Lark, an affluent of the Great Ouse; 87 m. N.E. by

N. from London by the Great Eastern railway. Pop. (1901) 16,255. It is

pleasantly situated on a gentle eminence, in a fertile and richly

cultivated district. The tower or church-gate, one of the finest specimens

of early Norman architecture in England, and the western gate, a beautiful

structure of rich Decorated work, together with ruined walls of

considerable extent, are all that remains of the great abbey. St Mary's

church, with a beautifully carved roof, was erected in the earlier part of

the 15th century, and contains the tomb of Mary Tudor, queen of Louis XII.

of France. St James's church is also a fine Perpendicular building, with a

modern chancel, and without a tower. All these splendid structures,

fronting one of the main streets in succession, form, even without the

abbey church, a remarkable memorial of the wealth of the foundation. Behind

them lie picturesque gardens which contain the ruins, the plan of which is

difficult to trace, though the outlines of some portions, as the

chapter-house, have been made clear by excavation. There is a handsome

Roman Catholic church of St Edmund. The so-called Moyses Hall (perhaps a

Jew's House, of which there is a parallel example at Lincoln) retains

transitional Norman work. The free grammar school, founded by Edward VI.,

has two scholarships at Cambridge, and six exhibitions to each university,

and occupies modern buildings. The Church Schools Company has a school.

There are large agricultural implement works, and the agricultural trade is

important, cattle and corn markets being held. In the vicinity is Ickworth,

the seat of the marquess of Bristol, a great mansion of the end of the 18th

century. The parliamentary borough, which returns one member, is

coextensive with the municipal borough. The town is governed by a mayor, 6

aldermen and 18 councillors. Area, 2947 acres.

Bury St Edmunds (Beodricesworth, St Edmund's Bury), supposed by some to

have been the Villa Faustina of the Romans, was one of the royal towns of

the Saxons. Sigebert, king of the East Angles, founded a monastery here

about 633, which in 903 became the burial place of King Edmund, who was

slain by the Danes about 870, and owed most of its early celebrity to the

reputed miracles performed at the shrine of the martyr king. By 925 the

fame of St Edmund had spread far and wide, and the name of the town was

changed to St Edmund's Bury. Sweyn, in 1020, having destroyed the older

monastery and ejected the secular priests, built a Benedictine abbey on its

site. In 942 or 945 King Edmund had granted to the abbot and convent

jurisdiction over the whole town, free from all secular services, and

Canute in 1020 freed it from episcopal control. Edward the Confessor made

the abbot lord of the franchise. By various grants from the abbots, the

town gradually attained the rank of a borough. Henry III. in 1235 granted

to the abbot two annual fairs, one in December (which still survives), the

other the great St Matthew's fair, which was abolished by the Fairs Act of

1871. Another fair was granted by Henry IV. in 1405. Elizabeth in 1562

confirmed the charters which former kings had granted to the abbots, and

James I. in 1606 granted a charter of incorporation with an annual fair in

Easter week and a market. Further charters were granted by him in 1608 and

1614, and by Charles II. in 1668 and 1684. The reversion of the fairs and

two markets on Wednesday and Saturday were granted by James I. in fee farm

to the corporation. Parliaments were held here in 1272, 1296 and 1446, but

the borough was not represented until 1608, when James I. conferred the

privilege of sending two members. The Redistribution Act 1885 reduced the

representation to one. There was formerly a large woollen trade.

See Richard Yates, _Hist. and Antiqs. of the Abbey of St Edmund's Bury_

(2nd ed., 1843); H.R. Barker, _History of Bury St Edmunds_.

BUSBECQ, OGIER GHISLAIN DE [AUGERIUS GISLENIUS] (1522-1592), Flemish writer

and traveller, was born at Comines, and educated at the university of

Louvain and elsewhere. Having served the emperor Charles V. and his son,

Philip II. of Spain, he entered the service of the emperor Ferdinand I.,

who sent him as ambassador to the sultan Suleiman I. the Magnificent. He

returned to Vienna in 1562 to become tutor to the sons of Maximilian II.,

afterwards emperor, subsequently taking the position of master of the

household of Elizabeth, widow of Charles IX., king of France, and daughter

of Maximilian. Busbecq was an excellent scholar, a graceful writer and a

clever diplomatist. He collected valuable manuscripts, rare coins and

curious inscriptions, and introduced various plants into Germany. He died

at the castle of Maillot near Rouen on the 28th of October 1592. Busbecq

wrote _Itinera Constantinopolitanum et Amasianum_ (Antwerp, 1581), a work

showing considerable insight into Turkish politics. This was published in

Paris in 1589 as _A.G. Busbequii legationis Turcicae epistolae iv._, and

has been translated into several languages. He was a frequent visitor to

France, and wrote _Epistolae ad Rudolphum II. Imperatorem e Gallia

scriptae_ (Louvain, 1630), an interesting account of affairs at the French

court. His works were published [v.04 p.0869] at Leiden in 1633 and at

Basel in 1740. An English translation of the _Itinera_ was published in

1744.

See C.T. Forster and F.H.B. Daniel, _Life and Letters of Ogier Ghiselin de

Busbecq_ (London, 1881); Viertel, _Busbecks Erlebnisse in der Turkei_

(Gottingen, 1902).

BUSBY, RICHARD (1606-1695), English clergyman, and head master of

Westminster school, was born at Lutton in Lincolnshire in 1606. He was

educated at the school which he afterwards superintended for so long a

period, and first signalized himself by gaining a king's scholarship. From

Westminster Busby proceeded to Christ Church, Oxford, where he graduated in

1628. In his thirty-third year he had already become renowned for the

obstinate zeal with which he supported the falling dynasty of the Stuarts,

and was rewarded for his services with the prebend and rectory of Cudworth,

with the chapel of Knowle annexed, in Somersetshire. Next year he became

head master of Westminster, where his reputation as a teacher soon became

great. He himself once boasted that sixteen of the bishops who then

occupied the bench had been birched with his "little rod". No school in

England has on the whole produced so many eminent men as Westminster did

under the régime of Busby. Among the more illustrious of his pupils may be

mentioned South, Dryden, Locke, Prior and Bishop Atterbury. He wrote and

edited many works for the use of his scholars. His original treatises (the

best of which are his Greek and Latin grammars), as well as those which he

edited, have, however, long since fallen into disuse. Busby died in 1695,

in his ninetieth year, and was buried in Westminster Abbey, where his

effigy is still to be seen.

BUSBY, the English name for a military head-dress of fur. Possibly the

original sense of a "busby wig" came from association with Dr Busby of

Westminster; but it is also derived from "buzz", in the phrase "buzz wig".

In its first Hungarian form the military busby was a cylindrical fur cap,

having a "bag" of coloured cloth hanging from the top; the end of this bag

was attached to the right shoulder as a defence against sword-cuts. In

Great Britain "busbies" are of two kinds: (_a_) the hussar busby,

cylindrical in shape, with a bag; this is worn by hussars and the Royal

Horse Artillery; (_b_) the rifle busby, a folding cap of astrachan, in

shape somewhat resembling a "Glengarry" but taller. Both have straight

plumes in the front of the headdress. The word "busby" is also used

colloquially to denote the tall bear-and-raccoon-skin "caps" worn by

foot-guards and fusiliers, and the full dress feather bonnet of Highland

infantry. Cylindrical busbies were formerly worn by the artillery engineers

and rifles, but these are now obsolete in the regular army, though still

worn by some territorial and colonial troops of these arms.

BUSCH, JULIUS HERMANN MORITZ (1821-1899), German publicist, was born at

Dresden on the 13th of February 1821. He entered the university of Leipzig

in 1841 as a student of theology, but graduated as doctor philosophiae, and

from 1847 devoted himself entirely to journalism and literature. In 1851 he

went to America, but soon returned disillusioned to Germany, and published

an account of his travels. During the next years he travelled extensively

in the East and wrote books on Egypt, Greece and Palestine. From 1856 he

was employed at Leipzig on the _Grenzboten_, one of the most influential

German periodicals, which, under the editorship of Gustav Freytag, had

become the organ of the Nationalist party. In 1864 he became closely

connected with the Augustenburg party in Schleswig-Holstein, but after 1866

he transferred his services to the Prussian government, and was employed in

a semi-official capacity in the newly conquered province of Hanover. From

1870 onwards he was one of Bismarck's press agents, and was at the

chancellor's side in this capacity during the whole of the campaign of

1870-71. In 1878 he published the first of his works on Bismarck--a book

entitled _Bismarck und seine Leute, während des Krieges mit Frankreich_, in

which, under the form of extracts from his diary, he gave an account of the

chancellor's life during the war. The vividness of the descriptions and the

cleverness with which the conversations were reported ensured a success,

and the work was translated into several languages. This was followed in

1885 by another book, _Unser Reichskanzler_, chiefly dealing with the work

in the foreign office in Berlin. Immediately after Bismarck's death Busch

published the chancellor's famous petition to the emperor William II. dated

the 18th of March 1890, requesting to be relieved of office. This was

followed by a pamphlet _Bismarck und sein Werk_; and in 1898 in London and

in English, by the famous memoirs entitled _Bismarck: some Secret Pages of

his History_ (German by Grunow, under title _Tagebuchblätter_), in which

were reprinted the whole of the earlier works, but which contains in

addition a considerable amount of new matter, passages from the earlier

works which had been omitted because of the attacks they contained on

people in high position, records of later conversations, and some important

letters and documents which had been entrusted to him by Bismarck. Many

passages were of such a nature that it could not be safely published in

Germany; but in 1899 a far better and more complete German edition was

published at Leipzig in three volumes and consisting of three sections.

Busch died at Leipzig on the 16th of November 1899.

See Ernst Goetz, in _Biog. Jahrbuch_ (1900).

BUSCH, WILHELM (1832-1908), German caricaturist, was born at Wiedensahl in

Hanover. After studying at the academies of Düsseldorf, Antwerp and Munich,

he joined in 1859 the staff of _Fliegende Blätter_, the leading German

comic paper, and was, together with Oberländer, the founder of modern

German caricature. His humorous drawings and caricatures are remarkable for

the extreme simplicity and expressiveness of his pen-and-ink line, which

record with a few rapid scrawls the most complicated contortions of the

body and the most transitory movement. His humorous illustrated poems, such

as _Max und Moritz, Der heilige Antonius von Padua, Die Fromme Helene, Hans

Huckebein_ and _Die Erlebnisse Knopps des Junggesellen_, play, in the

German nursery, the same part that Edward Lear's nonsense verses do in

England. The types created by him have become household words in his

country. He invented the series of comic sketches illustrating a story in

scenes without words, which have inspired Caran d'Ache and other leading

caricaturists.

BÜSCHING, ANTON FRIEDRICH (1724-1793), German theologian and geographer,

was born at Stadthagen in Schaumburg-Lippe, on the 27th of September 1724.

In 1748 he was appointed tutor in the family of the count de Lynars, who

was then going as ambassador to St Petersburg. On this journey he resolved

to devote his life to the improvement of geographical science. Leaving the

count's family, he went to reside at Copenhagen, and devoted himself

entirely to this new pursuit. In 1752 he published his _Description of the

Counties of Schleswig and Holstein_. In 1754 he removed to Göttingen, where

in 1757 he was appointed professor of philosophy; but in 1761 he accepted

an invitation to the German congregation at St Petersburg. There he

organized a school which, under him, soon became one of the most

flourishing in the north of Europe, but a disagreement with Marshal Münich

led him, in spite of the empress's offers of high advancement, to return to

central Europe in 1765. He first went to live at Altona; but next year he

was called to superintend the famous "Greyfriars Gymnasium" (_Gymnasium zum

Grauen Kloster_), which had been formed at Berlin by Frederick the Great.

He died of dropsy on the 28th of May 1793, having by writing and example

given a new impulse to education throughout Prussia. While at Göttingen he

married the poetess, Christiana Dilthey.

Büsching's works (on geography, history, education and religion) amount to

more than a hundred. The first class comprehends those upon which his fame

chiefly rests; for although he did not possess the genius of D'Anville, he

may be regarded as the creator of modern Statistical Geography. His _magnum

opus_ is the _Erdebeschreibung_, in seven parts, of which the first four,

comprehending Europe, were published in 1754-1761, and have been translated

into several languages (_e.g._ into English with a preface by Murdoch, in

six volumes, London, 1762). In 1768 the fifth part was published, being the

first volume upon Asia, containing Asiatic Turkey and Arabia. It displays

an immense extent of research, and is generally considered as his [v.04

p.0870] masterpiece. Büsching was also the editor of a valuable collection

entitled _Magazin für d. neue Historie und Geographie_ (23 vols. 4to,

1767-1793); also of _Wochentl. Nachrichten von neuen Landkarten_ (Berlin,

1773-1787). His works on education enjoyed great repute. In biography he

wrote a number of articles for the above-mentioned _Magazin_, and a

valuable collection of _Beiträge zur Lebensgeschichte merkwürdiger

Personen_ (6 vols., 1783-1789), including an elaborate life of Frederick

the Great.

BUSENBAUM (or BUSEMBAUM), HERMANN (1600-1668), Jesuit theologian, was born

at Nottelen in Westphalia. He attained fame as a master of casuistry, and

out of his lectures to students at Cologne grew his celebrated book

_Medulla theologiae moralis, facili ac perspicua methodo resolvens casus

conscientiae_ (1645). The manual obtained a wide popularity and passed

through over two hundred editions before 1776. Pierre Lacroix added

considerably to its bulk, and editions in two folio volumes appeared in

both Germany (1710-1714) and France (1729). In these sections on murder and

especially on regicide were much amplified, and in connexion with Damien's

attempt on the life of Louis XV. the book was severely handled by the

parlement of Paris. At Toulouse in 1757, though the offending sections were

repudiated by the heads of the Jesuit colleges, the _Medulla_ was publicly

burned, and the episode undoubtedly led the way to the duc de Choiseul's

attack on the society. Busenbaum also wrote a book on the ascetic life,

_Lilium inter spinas_. He became rector of the Jesuit college at Hildesheim

and then at Münster, where he died on the 31st of January 1668, being at

the time father-confessor to Bishop Bernard of Galen.

BUSH. (1) (A word common to many European languages, meaning "a wood", cf.

the Ger. _Busch_, Fr. _bois_, Ital. _bosco_ and the med. Lat. _boscus_), a

shrub or group of shrubs, especially of those plants whose branches grow

low and thick. Collectively "the bush" is used in British colonies,

particularly in Australasia and South Africa, for the tract of country

covered with brushwood not yet cleared for cultivation. From the custom of

hanging a bush as a sign outside a tavern comes the proverb "Good wine

needs no bush." (2) (From a Teutonic word meaning "a box", cf. the Ger.

_Rad-büchse_, a wheel box, and the termination of "blunderbuss" and

"arquebus"; the derivation from the Fr. _bouche_, a mouth, is not correct),

a lining frequently inserted in the bearings of machinery. When a shaft and

the bearing in which it rotates are made of the same metal, the two

surfaces are in certain cases apt to "seize" and abrade each other. To

prevent this, bushes of some dissimilar metal are employed; thus a shaft of

mild steel or wrought iron may be made to run in hard cast steel, cast

iron, bronze or Babbitt metal. The last, having a low melting point, may be

cast about the shaft for which it is to form a bearing.

[Illustration: Female Bushbuck.]