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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 Castellon de la
Plana; on the estuary of the river Seco, 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),
Almazora (7070), Villarreal (16,068) and Castellon 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
_emeute_ 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 Boeckh'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
Tuebingen; 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);
_Beitraege 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 ueber die Fortschritte der klassischen
Altertumswissenschaft_ (1873, &c.), of which he was the founder and editor;
from 1879 a _Biographisches Jahrbuch fuer 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.

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