Front matter (continued 5)

The place must, according to Sir E. Coke's definition, be a mansion-house, i.e. a man's dwelling-house or private residence. No building, although within the same curtilage as the dwelling-house, is deemed to be a part of the dwelling-house for the purposes of burglary, unless there is a communication between such building and dwelling-house either immediate or by means of a covered and enclosed passage leading from the one to the other. Chambers in a college or in an inn of court are the dwelling-house of the owner; so also are rooms or lodgings in a private house, provided the owner dwells elsewhere, or enters by a different outer door from his lodger, otherwise the lodger is merely an inmate and his apartment a parcel of the one dwelling-house.

As to the manner, there must be both a breaking and an entry. Both must be at night, but not necessarily on the same night, provided that in the breaking and in the entry there is an intent to commit a felony. The breaking may be either an actual breaking of any external part of a building; or opening or lifting any closed door, window, shutter or lock; or entry by means of a threat, artifice or collusion with persons inside; or by means of such a necessary opening as a chimney. If an entry is obtained through an open window, it will not be burglary, but if an inner door is afterwards opened, it immediately becomes so. Entry includes the insertion through an open door or window, or any aperture, of any part of the body or of any instrument in the hand to draw out goods. The entry may be before the breaking, for the Larceny Act 1861 has extended the definition of burglary to cases in which a person enters another's dwelling with intent to commit felony, or being in such house commits felony therein, and in either case breaks out of such dwelling-house by night.

Breaking and entry must be with the intent to commit a felony, otherwise it is only trespass. The felony need not be a larceny, it may be either murder or rape. The punishment is penal servitude for life, or any term not less than three years, or imprisonment not exceeding two years, with or without hard labour.

Housebreaking in English law is to be distinguished from burglary, in that it is not essential that it should be committed at night, nor in a dwelling-house. It may, according to the Larceny Act 1861, be committed in a school-house, shop, warehouse or counting-house. Every burglary involves housebreaking, but every housebreaking does not amount to burglary. The punishment for housebreaking is penal servitude for any term not exceeding fourteen years and not less than three years, or imprisonment for any term not exceeding two years, with or without hard labour.

In the United States the common-law definition of burglary has been modified by statute in many states, so as to cover what is defined in England as housebreaking; the maximum punishment nowhere exceeds imprisonment for twenty years.

Authorities.—Pollock and Maitland, History of English Law; Stephen, History of Criminal Law; Archbold, Pleading and Evidence in Criminal Cases; Russell, On Crimes and Misdemeanours; Stephen, Commentaries.

BURGON, JOHN WILLIAM (1813-1888), English divine, was born at Smyrna on the 21st of August 1813, the son of a Turkey merchant, who was a skilled numismatist and afterwards became an assistant in the antiquities department of the British Museum. His mother was a Greek. After a few years of business life, Burgon went to Worcester College, Oxford, in 1841, gained the Newdigate prize, took his degree in 1845, and won an Oriel fellowship in 1846. He was much influenced by his brother-in-law, the scholar and theologian Henry John Rose (1800-1873), a churchman of the old conservative type, with whom he used to spend his long vacations. Burgon made Oxford his headquarters, while holding a living at some distance. In 1863 he was made vicar of St Mary's, having attracted attention by his vehement sermons against Essays and Reviews. In 1867 he was appointed Gresham professor of divinity. In 1871 he published a defence of the genuineness of the twelve last verses of St Mark's Gospel. He now began an attack on the proposal for a new lectionary for the Church of England, based largely upon his objections to the principles for determining the authority of MS. readings adopted by Westcott and Hort, which he assailed in a memorable article in the Quarterly Review for 1881. This, with his other articles, was reprinted in 1884 under the title of The Revision Revised. His biographical essays on H.L. Mansel and others were also collected, and published under the title of Twelve Good Men (1888). Protests against the inclusion of Dr Vance Smith among the revisers, against the nomination of Dean Stanley to be select preacher in the university of Oxford, and against the address in favour of toleration in the matter of ritual, followed in succession. In 1876 Burgon was made dean of Chichester. He died on the 4th of August 1888. His life was written by Dean E.M. Goulburn (1892). Vehement and almost passionate in his convictions, Burgon nevertheless possessed a warm and kindly heart. He may be described as a high churchman of the type prevalent before the rise of the Tractarian school. His extensive collection of transcripts from the Greek Fathers, illustrating the text of the New Testament, was bequeathed to the British Museum.

BURGONET, or Burganet (from Fr. bourguignote, Burgundian helmet), a form of light helmet or head-piece, which was in vogue in the 16th and 17th centuries. In its normal form the burgonet was a large roomy cap with a brim shading the eyes, cheek-pieces or flaps, a comb, and a guard for the back of the neck. In many cases a vizor, or other face protection, and a chin-piece are found in addition, so that this piece of armour is sometimes mistaken for an armet (q.v.), but it can always be distinguished by the projecting brim in front. The morion and cabasset have no face, cheek or neck protection. The typical head-piece of the 17th-century soldier in England and elsewhere is a burgonet skull-cap with a straight brim, neck-guard and often, in addition, a fixed vizor of three thin iron bars which are screwed into, and hang down from, the brim in front of the eyes.

BURGOS, a province of northern Spain; bounded on the N.E. by Biscay and Álava, E. by Logroño, S.E. by Soria, S. by Segovia, S.W. by Valladolid, W. by Palencia, and N.W. by Santander. Pop. (1900) 338,828; area, 5480 sq. m. Burgos includes the isolated county of Treviño, which is shut in on all sides by territory belonging to Álava. The northern and north-eastern districts of the province are mountainous, and the central and southern form part of the vast and elevated plateau of Old Castile. The extreme northern region is traversed by part of the great Cantabrian chain. Eastwards are the highest peaks of the province in the Sierra de la Demanda (with the Cerro de San Millan, 6995 ft. high) and in the Sierra de Neila. On the eastern frontier, midway between these highlands and the Cantabrian chain, two comparatively low ranges, running east and west of Pancorbo, kave a gap through which run the railway and roads connecting Castile with the valley of the Ebro. This Pancorbo Pass has often been called the "Iron Gates of Castile," as a handful of men could hold it against an army. South and west of this spot begins the plateau, generally covered with snow in winter, and swept by such cold winds that Burgos is considered, with Soria and Segovia, one of the coldest regions of the peninsula. The Ebro runs eastwards through the northern half of the province, but is not navigable. The Douro, or Duero, crosses the southern half, running west-north-west; it also is unnavigable in its upper valley. The other important streams are the Pisuerga, flowing south towards Palencia and Valladolid, and the Arlanzón, which flows through Burgos for over 75m.

The variations of temperature are great, as from 9° to 20° of frost have frequently been recorded in winter, while the mean summer temperature is 64° (Fahr.). As but little rain falls in summer, and the soil is poor, agriculture thrives only in the valleys, especially that of the Ebro. In live-stock, however, Burgos is one of the richest of Spanish provinces. Horses, mules, asses, goats, cattle and pigs are bred in considerable numbers, but the mainstay of the peasantry is sheep-farming. Vast ranges of almost uninhabited upland are reserved as pasture for the flocks, which at the beginning of the 20th century contained more than 500,000 head of sheep. Coal, china-clay and salt are obtained in small quantities, but, out of more than 150 mines registered, only 4 were worked in 1903. The other industries of the province are likewise undeveloped, although there are many small potteries, stone quarries, tanneries and factories for the manufacture of linen and cotton of the coarsest description. The ancient cloth and woollen industries, for which Burgos was famous in the past, have almost disappeared. Trade is greatly hindered by the lack of adequate railway communication, and even of good roads. The Northern railways from Madrid to the French frontier cross the province in the central districts; the Valladolid-Bilbao line traverses the Cantabrian mountains, in the north; and the Valladolid-Saragossa line skirts the Douro valley, in the south. The only important town in the province is Burgos, the capital (pop. 30,167). Few parts of Spain are poorer; education makes little progress, and least of all in the thinly peopled rural districts, with their widely scattered hamlets. The peasantry have thus every inducement to migrate to the Basque Provinces, Catalonia and other relatively prosperous regions; and consequently the population does not increase, despite the excess of births over deaths.

BURGOS, the capital formerly of Old Castile, and since 1833 of the Spanish province of Burgos, on the river Arlanzón, and on the Northern railways from Madrid to the French frontier. Pop. (1900) 30,167. Burgos, in the form of an amphitheatre, occupies the lower slopes of a hill crowned by the ruins of an ancient citadel. It faces the Arlanzón, a broad and swift stream, with several islands in mid-channel. Three stone bridges lead to the suburb of La Vega, on the opposite bank. On all sides, except up the castle hill, fine avenues and public gardens are laid out, notably the Paseo de la Isla, extending along the river to the west. Burgos itself was originally surrounded by a wall, of which few fragments remain; but although its streets and broad squares, such as the central Plaza Mayór, or Plaza de la Constitucion, have often quite a modern appearance, the city retains much of its picturesque character, owing to the number and beauty of its churches, convents and palaces. Unaffected by the industrial activity of the neighbouring Basque Provinces, it has little trade apart from the sale of agricultural produce and the manufacture of paper and leathern goods.

But it is rich in architectural and antiquarian interest. The citadel was founded in 884 by Diego Rodriguez Porcelos, count of Castile; in the 10th century it was held against the kings of Leon by Count Fernan Gonzalez, a mighty warrior; and even in 1812 it was successfully defended by a French garrison against Lord Wellington and his British troops. Within its walls the Spanish national hero, the Cid Campeador, was wedded to Ximena of Oviedo in 1074; and Prince Edward of England (afterwards King Edward I.) to Eleanor of Castile in 1254. Statues of Porcelos, Gonzalez and the Cid, of Nuño Rasura and Lain Calvo, the first elected magistrates of Burgos, during its brief period of republican rule in the 10th century, and of the emperor Charles V., adorn the massive Arco de Santa Maria, which was erected between 1536 and 1562, and commemorates the return of the citizens to their allegiance, after the rebellion against Charles V. had been crushed in 1522. The interior of this arch serves as a museum. Tradition still points to the site of the Cid's birthplace; and a reliquary preserved in the town hall contains his bones, and those of Ximena, brought hither after many changes, including a partial transference to Sigmaringen in Germany.

Other noteworthy buildings in Burgos are the late 15th century Casa del Cordón, occupied by the captain-general of Old Castile; the Casa de Miranda, which worthily represents the best domestic architecture of Spain in the 16th century; and the barracks, hospitals and schools. Burgos is the see of an archbishop, whose province comprises the diocese of Palencia, Pamplona, Santander and Tudela. The cathedral, founded in 1221 by Ferdinand III. of Castile and the English bishop Maurice of Burgos, is a fine example of florid Gothic, built of white limestone (see Architecture, Plate II. fig. 65). It was not completed until 1567, and the architects principally responsible for its construction were a Frenchman in the 13th century and a German in the 15th. Its cruciform design is almost hidden by the fifteen chapels added at all angles to the aisles and transepts, by the beautiful 14th-century cloister on the north-west and the archiepiscopal palace on the south-west. Over the three central doorways of the main or western façade rise two lofty and graceful towers. Many of the monuments within the cathedral are of considerable artistic and historical interest. The chapel of Corpus Christi contains the chest which the Cid is said to have filled with sand and subsequently pawned for a large sum to the credulous Jews of Burgos. The legend adds that he redeemed his pledge. In the aisleless Gothic church of Santa Agueda, or Santa Gadéa, tradition relates that the Cid compelled Alphonso VI. of Leon, before his accession to the throne of Castile in 1072, to swear that he was innocent of the murder of Sancho his brother and predecessor on the throne. San Estéban, completed between 1280 and 1350, and San Nicolás, dating from 1505, are small Gothic churches, each with a fine sculptured doorway. Many of the convents of Burgos have been destroyed, and those which survive lie chiefly outside the city. At the end of the Paseo de la Isla stands the nunnery of Santa Maria la Real de las Huelgas, originally a summer palace (huelga, "pleasure-ground") of the kings of Castile. In 1187 it was transformed into a Cistercian convent by Alphonso VIII., who invested the abbess with almost royal prerogatives, including the power of life and death, and absolute rule over more than fifty villages. Alphonso and his wife Eleanor, daughter of Henry II. of England, are buried here. The Cartuja de Miraflores, a Carthusian convent, founded by John II. of Castile (1406-1454), lies 2 m. south-east of Burgos. Its church contains a monument of exceptional beauty, carved by Gil de Siloë in the 15th century, for the tomb of John and his second wife, Isabella of Portugal. The convent of San Pedro de Cardeña, 7 m. south-east of Burgos, was the original burial-place of the Cid, in 1099, and of Ximena, in 1104. About 50 m. from the city is the abbey of Silos, which appears to have been founded under the Visigothic kings, as early as the 6th century. It was restored in 919 by Fernan Gonzalez, and in the 11th century became celebrated throughout Europe, under the rule of St Dominic or Domingo. It was reoccupied in 1880 by French Benedictine monks.

The known history of Burgos begins in 884 with the foundation of the citadel. From that time forward it steadily increased in importance, reaching the height of its prosperity in the 15th century, when, alternately with Toledo, it was occupied as a royal residence, but rapidly declining when the court was finally removed to Madrid in 1560. Being on one of the principal military roads of the kingdom, it suffered severely during the Peninsular War. In 1808 it was the scene of the defeat of the Spanish army by the French under Marshal Soult. It was unsuccessfully besieged by Wellington in 1812, but was surrendered to him at the opening of the campaign of the following year.

Of the extensive literature relating to Burgos, much remains unedited and in manuscript. A general description of the city and its monuments is given by A. Llacayo y Santa Maria in Burgos, &c. (Burgos, 1889). See also Architectural, Sculptural and Picturesque Studies in Burgos and its Neighbourhood, a valuable series of architectural drawings in folio, by J.B. Waring (London, 1852). The following are monographs on particular buildings:—Historia de la Catedral de Burgos, &c., by P. Orcajo (Burgos, 1856); El Castillo de Burgos, by E. de Oliver-Copons (Barcelona, 1893); La Real Cartuja de Miraflores, by F. Tarin y Juaneda (Burgos, 1896). For the history of the city see En Burgos, by V. Balaguér (Burgos, 1895); Burgos en las comunidades de Castilla and Cosas de la vieja Burgos, both by A. Salvá (Burgos, 1895 and 1892). The following relate both to the city and to the province of Burgos:—Burgos, &c., by R. Amador de los Ríos, in the series entitled España (Barcelona, 1888); Burgos y su provincia, anon. (Vitoria, 1898); Intento de un diccionario biográfico y bibliográfico de autores de la prov. de Burgos, by M. Anibarro and M. Rives (Madrid, 1890).

BURGOYNE, JOHN (1722-1792), English general and dramatist, entered the army at an early age. In 1743 he made a runaway marriage with a daughter of the earl of Derby, but soon had to sell his commission to meet his debts, after which he lived abroad for seven years. By Lord Derby's interest Burgoyne was then reinstated at the outbreak of the Seven Years' War, and in 1758 he became captain and lieutenant-colonel in the foot guards. In 1758-1759 he participated in expeditions made against the French coast, and in the latter year he was instrumental in introducing light cavalry into the British army. The two regiments then formed were commanded by Eliott (afterwards Lord Heathfield) and Burgoyne. In 1761 he sat in parliament for Midhurst, and in the following year he served as brigadier-general in Portugal, winning particular distinction by his capture of Valencia d'Alcantara and of Villa Velha. In 1768 he became M.P. for Preston, and for the next few years he occupied himself chiefly with his parliamentary duties, in which he was remarkable for his general outspokenness and, in particular, for his attacks on Lord Clive. At the same time he devoted much attention to art and drama (his first play, The Maid of the Oaks, being produced by Garrick in 1775), and gambled recklessly. In the army he had by this time become a major-general, and on the outbreak of the American War of Independence he was appointed to a command. In 1777 he was at the head of the British reinforcements designed for the invasion of the colonies from Canada. In this disastrous expedition he gained possession of Ticonderoga (for which he was made a lieutenant-general) and Fort Edward; but, pushing on, was detached from his communications with Canada, and hemmed in by a superior force at Saratoga (q.v.). On the 17th of October his troops, about 3500 in number, laid down their arms. The success was the greatest the colonists had yet gained, and it proved the turning-point in the war. The indignation in England against Burgoyne was great, but perhaps unjust. He returned at once, with the leave of the American general, to defend his conduct, and demanded, but never obtained, a trial. He was deprived of his regiment and a governorship which he held. In 1782, however, when his political friends came into office, he was restored to his rank, given a colonelcy, and made commander-in-chief in Ireland and a privy councillor. After the fall of the Rockingham government in 1783, Burgoyne withdrew more and more into private life, his last public service being his participation in the impeachment of Warren Hastings. In his latter years he was principally occupied in literary and dramatic work. His comedy, The Heiress, which appeared in 1786, ran through ten editions within a year, and was translated into several foreign tongues. He died suddenly on the 4th of June 1792. General Burgoyne, whose wife died in June 1776 during his absence in Canada, had several natural children (born between 1782 and 1788) by Susan Caulfield, an opera singer, one of whom became Field Marshal Sir J.F. Burgoyne. His Dramatic and Poetical Works appeared in two vols., 1808.

See E.B. de Fonblanque, Political and Military Episodes from the Life and Correspondence of Right Hon. J. Burgoyne (1876); and W.L. Stone, Campaign of Lieut.-Gen. J. Burgoyne, &c. (Albany, N.Y., 1877).

BURGOYNE, SIR JOHN FOX, Bart. (1782-1871), British field marshal, was an illegitimate son of General John Burgoyne (q.v.). He was educated at Eton and Woolwich, obtained his commission in 1798, and served in 1800 in the Mediterranean. In 1805, when serving on the staff of General Fox in Sicily, he was promoted second captain. He accompanied the unfortunate Egyptian expedition of 1807, and was with Sir John Moore in Sweden in 1808 and in Portugal in 1808-9. In the Corunna campaign Burgoyne held the very responsible position of chief of engineers with the rear-guard of the British army (see Peninsular War). He was with Wellesley at the Douro in 1809, and was promoted captain in the same year, after which he was engaged in the construction of the lines of Torres Vedras in 1810. He blew up Fort Concepcion on the river Turones, and was present at Busaco and Torres Vedras. In 1811 he was employed in the unsuccessful siege of Badajoz, and in 1812 he won successively the brevets of major and lieutenant-colonel, for his skilful performance of engineer duties at the historic sieges of Ciudad Rodrigo and Badajoz. He was present in the same year (1812) at the siege and battle of Salamanca, and after the battle of Vittoria in 1813 he became commanding engineer on Lord Wellington's staff. At the close of the war he received the C.B., a reward which, he justly considered, was not commensurate with his services. In 1814-1815 he served at New Orleans and Mobile. Burgoyne was largely employed, during the long peace which followed Waterloo, in other public duties as well as military work. He sat on numerous commissions, and served for fifteen years as chairman of the Irish board of public works. He became a major-general and K.C.B. in 1838, and inspector-general of fortifications in 1845. In 1851 he was promoted lieutenant-general, and in the following year received the G.C.B. When the Crimean War broke out he accompanied Lord Raglan's headquarters to the East, superintended the disembarkation at Old Fort, and was in effect the principal engineer adviser to the English commander during the first part of the siege of Sevastopol. He was recalled early in 1855, and though he was at first bitterly criticized by the public for his part in the earlier and unsuccessful operations against the fortress the wisdom of his advice was ultimately recognized. In 1856 he was created a baronet, and promoted to the full rank of general. In 1858 he was present at the second funeral of Napoleon I. as Queen Victoria's representative, and in 1865 he was made constable of the Tower of London. Three years later, on resigning his post as inspector-general of fortifications, he was made a field marshal. Parliament granted him, at the same time, a pension of £1500. He died on the 7th of October 1871, a year after the tragic death of his only son, Captain Hugh Talbot Burgoyne, V.C. (1833-1870), who was in command of H.M.S. "Captain" when that vessel went down in the Bay of Biscay (September 7, 1870).

See Life and Correspondence of F.M. Sir John Fox Burgoyne (edited by Lt.-Col. Hon. G. Wrottesley, R.E., London, 1873); Sir Francis Head, A Sketch of the Life and Death of F.M. Sir John Burgoyne (London, 1872); Military Opinions of General Sir John Burgoyne (ed. Wrottesley, London, 1859), a collection of the most important of Burgoyne's contributions to military literature.

BURGRAVE, the Eng. form, derived through the Fr., of the Ger. Burggraf and Flem. burg or burch-graeve (med. Lat. burcgravius or burgicomes), i.e. count of a castle or fortified town. The title is equivalent to that of castellan (Lat. castellanus) or châtelain (q.v.). In Germany, owing to the peculiar conditions of the Empire, though the office of burgrave had become a sinecure by the end of the 13th century, the title, as borne by feudal nobles having the status of princes of the Empire, obtained a quasi-royal significance. It is still included among the subsidiary titles of several sovereign princes; and the king of Prussia, whose ancestors were burgraves of Nuremberg for over 200 years, is still styled burgrave of Nuremberg.

BURGRED, king of Mercia, succeeded to the throne in 852, and in 852 or 853 called upon Æthelwulf of Wessex to aid him in subduing the North Welsh. The request was granted and the campaign proved successful, the alliance being sealed by the marriage of Burgred to Æthelswith, daughter of Æthelwulf. In 868 the Mercian king appealed to Æthelred and Alfred for assistance against the Danes, who were in possession of Nottingham. The armies of Wessex and Mercia did no serious fighting, and the Danes were allowed to remain through the winter. In 874 the march of the Danes from Lindsey to Repton drove Burgred from his kingdom. He retired to Rome and died there.

See Saxon Chronicle (Earle and Plummer), years 852-853, 868, 874.

BURGUNDIO, sometimes erroneously styled Burgundius, an Italian jurist of the 12th century. He was a professor at the university of Paris, and assisted at the Lateran Council in 1179, dying at a very advanced age in 1194. He was a distinguished Greek scholar, and is believed on the authority of Odofredus to have translated into Latin, soon after the Pandects were brought to Bologna, the various Greek fragments which occur in them, with the exception of those in the 27th book, the translation of which has been attributed to Modestinus. The Latin translations ascribed to Burgundio were received at Bologna as an integral part of the text of the Pandects, and form part of that known as The Vulgate in distinction from the Florentine text.

BURGUNDY. The name of Burgundy (Fr. Bourgogne, Lat. Burgundia) has denoted very diverse political and geographical areas at different periods of history and as used by different writers. The name is derived from the Burgundians (Burgundi, Burgondiones), a people of Germanic origin, who at first settled between the Oder and the Vistula. In consequence of wars against the Alamanni, in which the latter had the advantage, the Burgundians, after having taken part in the great invasion of Radagaisus in 407, were obliged in 411 to take refuge in Gaul, under the leadership of their chief Gundicar. Under the title of allies of the Romans, they established themselves in certain cantons of the Sequani and of upper Germany, receiving a part of the lands, houses and serfs that belonged to the inhabitants. Thus was founded the first kingdom of Burgundy, the boundaries of which were widened at different times by Gundicar and his son Gunderic; its chief towns being Vienne, Lyons, Besançon, Geneva, Autun and Mâcon. Gundibald (d. 516), grandson of Gunderic, is famous for his codification of the Burgundian law, known consequently as Lex Gundobada, in French Loi Gombette. His son Sigismund, who was canonized by the church, founded the abbey of St Maurice at Agaunum. But, incited thereto by Clotilda, the daughter of Chilperic (a brother of Gundibald, and assassinated by him), the Merovingian kings attacked Burgundy. An attempt made in 524 by Clodomer was unsuccessful; but in 534 Clotaire (Chlothachar) and his brothers possessed themselves of the lands of Gundimar, brother and successor of Sigismund, and divided them between them. In 561 the kingdom of Burgundy was reconstructed by Guntram, son of Clotaire I., and until 613 it formed a separate state under the government of a prince of the Merovingian family.

After 613 Burgundy was one of the provinces of the Frankish kingdom, but in the redistributions that followed the reign of Charlemagne the various parts of the ancient kingdom had different fortunes. In 843, by the treaty of Verdun, Autun, Chalon, Mâcon, Langres, &c., were apportioned to Charles the Bald, and Lyons with the country beyond the Saône to Lothair I. On the death of the latter the duchy of Lyons (Lyonnais and Viennois) was given to Charles of Provence, and the diocese of Besançon with the country beyond the Jura to Lothair, king of Lorraine. In 879 Boso founded the kingdom of Provence, wrongly called the kingdom of Cisjuran Burgundy, which extended to Lyons, and for a short time as far as Mâcon (see Provence).

In 888 the kingdom of Juran Burgundy was founded by Rudolph I., son of Conrad, count of Auxerre, and the German king Arnulf could not succeed in expelling the usurper, whose authority was recognized in the diocese of Besançon, Basel, Lausanne, Geneva and Sion. For a short time his son and successor Rudolph II. (912-937) disputed the crown of Italy with Hugh of Provence, but finally abandoned his claims in exchange for the ancient kingdom of Provence, i.e. the country bounded by the Rhône, the Alps and the Mediterranean. His successor, Conrad the Peaceful (93 7-993), whose sister Adelaide married Otto the Great, was hardly more than a vassal of the German kings. The last king of Burgundy, Rudolph III. (993-1032), being deprived of all but a shadow of power by the development of the secular and ecclesiastical aristocracy—especially by that of the powerful feudal houses of the counts of Burgundy (see Franche-Comté), Savoy and Provence—died without issue, bequeathing his lands to the emperor Conrad II. Such was the origin of the imperial rights over the kingdom designated after the 13th century as the kingdom of Arles, which extended over a part of what is now Switzerland (from the Jura to the Aar), and included Franche-Comté, Lyonnais, Dauphiné, Savoy and Provence.

The name of Burgundy now gradually became restricted to the countship of that name, which included the district between the Jura and the Saône, in later times called Franche-Comté, and to the duchy which had been created by the Carolingian kings in the portion of Burgundy that had remained French, with the object of resisting Boso. This duchy had been granted to Boso's brother, Richard the Justiciary, count of Autun. It comprised at first the countships of Autun, Mâcon, Chalon-sur-Saône, Langres, Nevers, Auxerre and Sens, but its boundaries and designations changed many times in the course of the 10th century. Duke Henry died in 1002; and in 1015, after a war which lasted thirteen years, the French king Robert II. reunited the duchy to his kingdom, despite the opposition of Otto William, count of Burgundy, and gave it to his son Henry, afterwards King Henry I. As king of France, the latter in 1032 bestowed the duchy upon his brother Robert, from whom sprang that first ducal house of Burgundy which flourished until 1361. A grandson of this Robert, who went to Spain to fight the Arabs, became the founder of the kingdom of Portugal; but in general the first Capet dukes of Burgundy were pacific princes who took little part in the political events of their time, or in that religious movement which was so marked in Burgundy, at Cluny to begin with, afterwards among the disciples of William of St Bénigne of Dijon, and later still among the monks of Cîteaux. In the 12th and 13th centuries we may mention Duke Hugh III. (1162-1193), who played an active part in the wars that marked the beginning of Philip Augustus's reign; Odo (Eudes) III. (1193-1218), one of Philip Augustus's principal supporters in his struggle with King John of England; Hugh IV. (1218-1272), who acquired the countships of Châlon and Auxonne, Robert II. (1272-1309), one of whose daughters, Margaret, married Louis X. of France, and another, Jeanne, Philip of Valois; Odo (Eudes) IV. (1315-1350), who gained the countship of Artois in right of his wife, Jeanne of France, daughter of Philip V. the Tall and of Jeanne, countess of Burgundy.

In 1361, on the death of Duke Philip de Rouvres, son of Jeanne of Auvergne and Boulogne, who had married the second time John II. of France, surnamed the Good, the duchy of Burgundy returned to the crown of France. In 1363 John gave it, with hereditary rights, to his son Philip, surnamed the Bold, thus founding that second Capet house of Burgundy which filled such an important place in the history of France during the 14th and 15th centuries, acquiring as it did a territorial power which proved redoubtable to the kingship itself. By his marriage with Margaret of Flanders Philip added to his duchy, on the death of his father-in-law, Louis of Male, in 1384, the countships of Burgundy and Flanders; and in the same year he purchased the countship of Charolais from John, count of Armagnac. On the death of Charles V. in 1380 Philip and his brothers, the dukes of Anjou and Berry, had possessed themselves of the regency, and it was he who led Charles VI. against the rebellious Flemings, over whom the young king gained the victory of Roosebeke in 1382. Momentarily deprived of power during the period of the "Marmousets'" government, he devoted himself to the administration of his own dominions, establishing in 1386 an audit-office (chambre des comptes) at Dijon and another at Lille. In 1396 he refused to take part personally in the expedition against the Turks which ended in the disaster of Nicopolis, and would only send his son John, then count of Nevers. In 1392 the king's madness caused Philip's recall to power along with the other princes of the blood, and from this time dates that hostility between the party of Burgundy and the party of Orleans which was to become so intense when in May 1404 Duke Philip had been succeeded by his son, John the Fearless.

In 1407 the latter caused the assassination of his political rival, Louis of Orleans, the king's brother. Forced to quit Paris for a time, he soon returned, supported in particular by the gild of the butchers and by the university. The monk Jean Petit pronounced an apology for the murder (1408).

The victory of Hasbain which John achieved on the 23rd of September 1408 over the Liégeois, who had attacked his brother-in-law, John of Bavaria, bishop of Liége, still further strengthened his power and reputation, and during the following years the struggle between the Burgundians and the partisans of the duke of Orleans—or Armagnacs, as they were called—went on with varying results. In 1413 a reaction took place in Paris; John the Fearless was once more expelled from the capital, and only returned there in 1418, thanks to the treason of Perrinet Leclerc, who yielded up the town to him. In 1419, just when he was thinking of making advances towards the party of the dauphin (Charles VII.), he was assassinated by members of that party, during an interview between himself and the dauphin at the bridge of Montereau.

This event inclined the new duke of Burgundy, Philip the Good, towards an alliance with England. In 1420 he signed the treaty of Troyes, which recognized Henry V. as the legitimate successor of Charles VI.; in 1423 he gave his sister Anne in marriage to John, duke of Bedford; and during the following years the Burgundian troops supported the English pretender. But a dispute between him and the English concerning the succession in Hainaut, their refusal to permit the town of Orleans to place itself under his rule, and the defeats sustained by them, all combined to embroil him with his allies, and in 1435 he concluded the treaty of Arras with Charles VII. The king relieved the duke of all homage for his estates during his lifetime, and gave up to him the countships of Mâcon, Auxerre, Bar-sur-Seine and Ponthieu; and, reserving the right of redemption, the towns of the Somme (Roye, Montdidier, Péronne, &c.). Besides this Philip had acquired Brabant and Holland in 1433 as the inheritance of his mother. He gave an asylum to the dauphin Louis when exiled from Charles VII.'s court, but refused to assist him against his father, and henceforth rarely intervened in French affairs. He busied himself particularly with the administration of his state, founding the university of Dôle, having records made of Burgundian customs, and seeking to develop the commerce and industries of Flanders. A friend to letters and the arts, he was the protector of writers like Olivier de la Marche, and of sculptors of the school of Dijon. He also desired to revive ancient chivalry as he conceived it, and in 1429 founded the order of the Golden Fleece; while during the last years of his life he devoted himself to the preparation of a crusade against the Turks. Neither these plans, however, nor his liberality, prevented his leaving a well-filled treasury and enlarged dominions when he died in 1467.

Philip's successor was his son by his third wife, Isabel of Portugal, Charles, surnamed the Bold, count of Charolois, born in 1433. To him his father had practically abandoned his authority during his last years. Charles had taken an active part in the so-called wars "for the public weal," and in the coalitions of nobles against the king which were so frequent during the first years of Louis XI.'s reign. His struggle against the king is especially marked by the interview at Péronne in 1468, when the king had to confirm the duke in his possession of the towns of the Somme, and by a fruitless attempt which Charles the Bold made on Beauvais in 1472. Charles sought above all to realize a scheme already planned by his father. This was to annex territory which would reunite Burgundy with the northern group of her possessions (Flanders, Brabant, &c.), and to obtain the emperor's recognition of the kingdom of "Belgian Gaul." In 1469 he bought the landgraviate of Alsace and the countship of Ferrette from the archduke Sigismund of Austria, and in 1473 the aged duke Arnold ceded the duchy of Gelderland to him. In the same year he had an interview at Trier with the emperor Frederick III., when he offered to give his daughter and heiress, Mary of Burgundy, in marriage to the emperor's son Maximilian in exchange for the concession of the royal title. But the emperor, uneasy at the ambition of the "grand-duke of the West," did not pursue the negotiations.

Meanwhile the tyranny of the duke's lieutenant Peter von Hagenbach, who was established at Ferrette as governor (grand bailli or Landvogt) of Upper Alsace, had brought about an insurrection. The Swiss supported the cause of their allies, the inhabitants of the free towns of Alsace, and Duke René II. of Lorraine also declared war against Charles. In 1474 the Swiss invaded Franche-Comté and achieved the victory of Hericourt. In 1475 Charles succeeded in conquering Lorraine, but an expedition against the Swiss ended in the defeat of Grandson (February 1476). In the same year the duke was again beaten at Morat, and the Burgundian nobles had to abandon to the victors a considerable amount of booty. Finally the duke of Lorraine returned to his dominions; Charles advanced against him, but on the 6th of January 1477 he was defeated and killed before Nancy.

By his wife, Isabella of Bourbon, he only left a daughter, Mary, and Louis XI. claimed possession of her inheritance as guardian to the young princess. He succeeded in getting himself acknowledged in the duchy and countship of Burgundy, which were occupied by French garrisons. But Mary, alarmed by this annexation, and by the insurrection at Ghent (secretly fomented by Louis), decided to marry the archduke Maximilian of Austria, to whom she had already been promised (August 1477), and hostilities soon broke out between the two princes. Mary died through a fall from her horse in March 1482, and in the same year the treaty of Arras confirmed Louis XI. in possession of the duchy. Franche-Comté and Artois were to form the dowry of the little Margaret of Burgundy, daughter of Mary and Maximilian, who was promised in marriage to the dauphin. As to the lands proceeding from the succession of Charles the Bold, which had returned to the Empire (Brabant, Hainaut, Limburg, Namur, Gelderland, &c.), they constituted the "Circle of Burgundy" from 1512 onward.

We know that the title of duke of Burgundy was revived in 1682 for a short time by Louis XIV. in favour of his grandson Louis, the pupil of Fénelon. But from the 16th to the 18th century Burgundy constituted a military government bounded on the north by Champagne, on the south by Lyonnais, on the east by Franche-Comté, on the west by Bourbonnais and Nivernais. It comprised Dijonnais, Autunois, Auxois, and the pays de la montagne or Country of the Mountain (Châtillon-sur-Seine), with the "counties" of Chalonnais, Mâconnais, Auxerrois and Bar-sur-Seine, and, so far as administration went, the annexes of Bresse, Bugey, Valromey and the country of Gex. Burgundy was a pays d'états. The estates, whose privileges the dukes at first, and later Louis XI., had to swear to maintain, had their assembly at Dijon, usually under the presidency of the governor of the province, the bishop of Autun as representing the clergy, and the mayor of Dijon representing the third estate. In the judiciary point of view the greater part of Burgundy depended on the parlement of Dijon; but Auxerrois and Mâconnais were amenable to the parlement of Paris.

See also U. Plancher, Histoire générale et particulière de Bourgogne (Dijon, 1739—1781, 4 vols. 8vo); Courtépée, Description générale et particulière du duché de Bourgogne (Dijon, 1774-1785, 7 vols. 8vo); O. Jahn. Geschichte der Burgundionen (Halle, 1874, 2 vols. 8vo); E. Petit de Vausse, Histoire des dues de Bourgogne de la race capétienne (Paris, 1885-1905, 9 vols. 8vo); B. de Barante, Histoire des ducs de Bourgogne de la maison de Valois (Paris, 1833—1836, 13 vols. 8vo); the marquis Léon E.S.J. de Laborde, Les Ducs de Bourgogne: Études sur les lettres, les arts et l'industrie pendant le XV siècle (Paris, 1849-1851, 3 vols. 8vo).

(R. Po.)

BURHANPUR, a town of British India in the Nimar district of the Central Provinces, situated on the north bank of the river Tapti, 310 m. N.E. of Bombay, and 2 m. from the Great Indian Peninsula railway station of Lalbagh. It was founded in A.D. 1400 by a Mahommedan prince of the Farukhi dynasty of Khandesh, whose successors held it for 200 years, when the Farukhi kingdom was annexed to the empire of Akbar. It formed the chief seat of the government of the Deccan provinces of the Mogul empire till Shah Jahan removed the capital to Aurangabad in 1635. Burhanpur was plundered in 1685 by the Mahrattas, and repeated battles were fought in its neighbourhood in the struggle between that race and the Mussulmans for the supremacy of India. In 1739 the Mahommedans finally yielded to the demand of the Mahrattas for a fourth of the revenue, and in 1760 the Nizam of the Deccan ceded Burhanpur to the peshwa, who in 1778 transferred it to Sindhia. In the Mahratta War the army under General Wellesley, afterwards the duke of Wellington, took Burhanpur (1803), but the treaty of the same year restored it to Sindhia. It remained a portion of Sindhia's dominions till 1860-1861, when, in consequence of certain territorial arrangements, the town and surrounding estates were ceded to the British government. Under the Moguls the city covered an area of about 5 sq. m., and was about 10½ m. in circumference. In the Ain-í-Akbari it is described as a "large city, with many gardens, inhabited by all nations, and abounding with handicraftsmen." Sir Thomas Roe, who visited it in 1614, found that the houses in the town were "only mud cottages, except the prince's house, the chan's and some few others." In 1865-1866 the city contained 8000 houses, with a population of 34,137, which had decreased to 33,343 in 1901. Burhanpur is celebrated for its muslins, flowered silks, and brocades, which, according to Tavernier, who visited it in 1668, were exported in great quantities to Persia, Egypt, Turkey, Russia and Poland. The gold and silver wires used in the manufacture of these fabrics are drawn with considerable care and skill; and in order to secure the purity of the metals employed for their composition, the wire-drawing under the native rule was done under government inspection. The town of Burhanpur and its manufactures were long on the decline, but during recent times have made a slight recovery. The buildings of interest in the town are a palace, built by Akbar, called the Lal Kila or the Red Fort, and the Jama Masjid or Great Mosque, built by Ali Khan, one of the Farukhi dynasty, in 1588. A considerable number of Boras, a class of commercial Mahommedans, reside here.

BURI, or Bure, in Norse mythology, the grandfather of Odin. In the creation of the world he was born from the rocks, licked by the cow Andhumla (darkness). He was the father of Bor, and the latter, wedded to Bestla, the daughter of the giant Bolthorn (evil), became the father of Odin, the Scandinavian Jove.

BURIAL and BURIAL ACTS (in O. Eng. byrgels, whence byriels, wrongly taken as a plural, and so Mid. Eng. buryel, from O. Eng. byrgan, properly to protect, cover, to bury). The main lines of the law of burial in England may be stated very shortly. Every person has the right to be buried in the churchyard or burial ground of the parish where he dies, with the exception of executed felons, who are buried in the precincts of the prison or in a place appointed by the home office. At common law the person under whose roof a death takes place has a duty to provide for the body being carried to the grave decently covered; and the executors or legal representatives of the deceased are bound to bury or dispose of the body in a manner becoming the estate of the deceased, according to their discretion, and they are not bound to fulfil the wishes he may have expressed in this respect. The disposal must be such as will not expose the body to violation, or offend the feelings or endanger the health of the living; and cremation under proper restrictions is allowable. In the case of paupers dying in a parish house, or shipwrecked persons whose bodies are cast ashore, the overseers or guardians are responsible for their burial; and in the case of suicides the coroner has a similar duty. The expenses of burial are payable out of the deceased's estate in priority to all other debts. A husband liable for the maintenance of his wife is liable for her funeral expenses; the parents for those of their children, if they have the means of paying. Legislation has principally affected (1) places of burial, (2) mode of burial, (3) fees for burial, and (4) disinterment.

1. The overcrowded state of churchyards and burial grounds gradually led to the passing of a group of statutes known as the Burial Acts, extending from 1852 up to 1900. By these acts a general system was set up, the aim of which was to remedy the existing deficiencies of accommodation by providing new burial grounds and closing old ones which should be dangerous to health, and to establish a central authority, the home office (now for most purposes the Local Government Board) to superintend all burial grounds with a view to the protection of the public health and the maintenance of public decency in burials. The Local Government Board thus has the power to obtain by order in council the closing of any burial ground it thinks fit, while its consent is necessary to the opening of any new burial ground; and it also has power to direct inspection of any burial ground or cemetery, and to regulate burials in common graves in statutory cemeteries and to compel persons in charge of vaults or places of burial to take steps necessary for preventing their becoming dangerous or injurious to health. The vestry of any parish, whether a common-law or ecclesiastical one, was thus authorized to provide itself with a new burial ground, if its existing one was no longer available; such ground might be wholly or partly consecrated, and chapels might be provided for the performance of burial service. The ground was put under the management of a burial board, consisting of ratepayers elected by the vestry, and the consecrated portion of it took the place of the churchyard in all respects. Disused churchyards and burial grounds in the metropolis may be used as open spaces for recreation, and only buildings for religious purposes can be built on them (1881, 1884, 1887). The Local Government Act 1894 introduced a change into the government of burial grounds (consequent on the general change made in parochial government) by transferring, or allowing to be transferred, the powers, duties, property and liabilities of the burial boards in urban districts to the district councils, and in rural parishes to the parish councils and parish meetings; and by allowing rural parishes to adopt the Burials Acts, and provide and manage new burial grounds by the parish council, or a burial board elected by the parish meeting.

2. The mode of burial is a matter of ecclesiastical cognizance; in the case of churchyards and elsewhere it is in the discretion of the owners of the burial ground. The Local Government Board now makes regulations for burials in burial grounds provided under the Burial Acts; for cemeteries provided under the Public Health Act 1879. Private cemeteries and burial grounds make their own regulations. Burial may now take place either with or without a religious service in consecrated ground. Before 1880 no body could be buried in consecrated ground except with the service of the Church, which the incumbent of the parish or a person authorized by him was bound to perform; but the canons and prayer-book refused the use of the office for excommunicated persons, majori excommunicatione, for some grievous and notorious crime, and no person able to testify of his repentance, unbaptized persons, and persons against whom a verdict of felo de se had been found. But by the Burial Laws Amendment Act 1880, the bodies of persons entitled to be buried in parochial burial grounds, whether churchyards or graveyards, may be buried there, on proper notice being given to the minister, without the performance of the service of the Church of England, and either without any religious service or with a Christian and orderly religious service at the grave, which may be conducted by any person invited to do so by the person in charge of the funeral. Clergymen of the Church of England are also by the act allowed, but are not obliged, to use the burial service in any unconsecrated burial ground or cemetery, or building therein, in any case in which it could be used in consecrated ground. In cases where it may not be so used, and where such is the wish of those in charge of the service, the clergy may use a form of service approved by the bishop without being liable to any ecclesiastical or temporal penalty. Except as altered by this act, it is still the law that "the Church knows no such indecency as putting a body into consecrated ground without the service being at the same time performed"; and nothing in the act authorizes the use of the service on the burial of a felo de se, which, however, may take place in any way allowed by the act of 1880. The proper performance of the burial office is provided for by the Public Worship Regulation Act 1874. Statutory provision is made by the criminal law in this act for the preservation of order in burial grounds and protection of funeral services.

3. Fees are now payable by custom or under statutory powers on all burials. In a churchyard the parson must perform the office of burial for parishioners, even if the customary fee is denied, and it is doubtful who is liable to pay it. The custom must be immemorial and invariable. If not disputed, its payment can be enforced in the ecclesiastical court; if disputed, its validity must be tried by a temporal court. A special contract for the payment of an annual fee in the case of a non-parishioner can be enforced in the latter court. In the case of paupers and shipwrecked persons the fees are payable by the parish. In other parochial burial grounds and cemeteries the duties and rights to fees of the incumbents, clerks and sextons of the parishes for which the ground has been provided are the same as in burials in the churchyard. Burial authorities may fix the fees payable in such grounds, subject to the approval of the home secretary; but the fees for services rendered by ministers of religion and sextons must be the same in the consecrated as in the unconsecrated part of the burial ground, and no incumbent of a parish or a clerk may receive any fee upon burials except for services rendered by them (act of 1900). On burials under the act of 1880 the same fees are payable as if the burial had taken place with the service of the Church.

4. A corpse is not the subject of property, nor capable of holding property. If interred in consecrated ground, it is under the protection of the ecclesiastical court; if in unconsecrated, it is under that of the temporal court. In the former case it is an ecclesiastical offence, and in either case it is a misdemeanour, to disinter or remove it without proper authority, whatever the motive for such an act may be. Such proper authority is (1) a faculty from the ordinary, where it is to be removed from one consecrated place of burial to another, and this is often done on sanitary grounds or to meet the wishes of relatives, and has been done for secular purposes, e.g. widening a thoroughfare, by allowing part of the burial ground (disused) to be thrown into it; but it has been refused where the object was to cremate the remains, or to transfer them from a churchyard to a Roman Catholic burial ground; (2) a licence from the home secretary, where it is desired to transfer remains from one unconsecrated place of burial to another; (3) by order of the coroner, in cases of suspected crime. There has been considerable discussion as to the boundary line of jurisdiction between (1) and (2), and whether the disinterment of a body from consecrated ground for purposes of identification falls within, (1) only or within both (1) and (2); and an attempt by the ecclesiastical court to enforce a penalty for that purpose without a licence has been prohibited by the temporal court.

See also Churchyard; and, for methods of disposal of the dead, Cemetery; Cremation, and Funeral Rites.

Authorities.—Baker, Law of Burials (6th ed. by Thomas, London, 1898); Phillimore, Ecclestastical Law (2nd ed., London, 1895); Cripps, Law of Church and Clergy (6th ed., London, 1886).

(G. G. P.*)

BURIAL SOCIETIES, a form of friendly societies, existing mainly in England, and constituted for the purpose of providing by voluntary subscriptions, for insuring money to be paid on the death of a member, or for the funeral expenses of the husband, wife or child of a member, or of the widow of a deceased member. (See Friendly Societies.)

BURIATS, a Mongolian race, who dwell in the vicinity of the Baikal Lake, for the most part in the government of Irkutsk and the Trans-Baikal Territory. They are divided into various tribes or clans, which generally take their names from the locality they frequent. These tribes are subdivided according to kinship. The Buriats are a broad-shouldered race inclined to stoutness, with small slanting eyes, thick lips, high cheekbones, broad and flat noses and scanty beards. The men shave their heads and wear a pigtail like the Chinese. In summer they dress in silk and cotton gowns, in winter in furs and sheepskins. Their principal occupation is the rearing of cattle and horses. The Buriat horse is famous for its power of endurance, and the attachment between master and animal is very great. At death the horse should, according to their religion, be sacrificed at its owner's grave; but the frugal Buriat heir usually substitutes an old hack, or if he has to tie up the valuable steed to the grave to starve he does so only with the thinnest of cords so that the animal soon breaks his tether and gallops off to join the other horses. In some districts the Buriats have learned agriculture from the Russians, and in Irkutsk are really better farmers than the latter. They are extraordinarily industrious at manuring and irrigation. They are also clever at trapping and fishing. In religion the Buriats are mainly Buddhists; and their head lama (Khambo Lama) lives at the Goose Lake (Guisinoe Ozero). Others are Shamanists, and their most sacred spot is the Shamanic stone at the mouth of the river Angar. Some thousands of them around Lake Baikal are Christians. A knowledge of reading and writing is common, especially among the Trans-Baikal Buriats, who possess books of their own, chiefly translated from the Tibetan. Their own language is Mongolian, and of three distinct dialects. It was in the 16th century that the Russians first came in touch with the Buriats, who were long known by the name of Bratskiye, "Brotherly," given them by the Siberian colonists. In the town of Bratskiyostrog, which grew up around the block-house built in 1631 at the confluence of the Angara and Oka to bring them into subjection, this title is perpetuated. The Buriats made a vigorous resistance to Russian aggression, but were finally subdued towards the end of the 17th century, and are now among the most peaceful of Russian peoples.

See J.G. Gruelin, Siberia; Pierre Simon Pallas, Sammlungen historischer Nachrichten über die mongolischen Volkerschaften (St Petersburg, 1776-1802); M.A. Castrén, Versuch einer buriatischen Sprachlehre (1857); Sir H.H. Howorth, History of the Mongols (1876-1888).

BURIDAN, JEAN [Joannes Buridanus] (c. 1297-c. 1358), French philosopher, was born at Béthune in Artois. He studied in Paris under William of Occam. He was professor of philosophy in the university of Paris, was rector in 1327, and in 1345 was deputed to defend its interests before Philip of Valois and at Rome. He was more than sixty years old in 1358, but the year of his death is not recorded. The tradition that he was forced to flee from France along with other nominalists, and founded the university of Vienna in 1356, is unsupported and in contradiction to the fact that the university was founded by Frederick II. in 1237. An ordinance of Louis XI., in 1473, directed against the nominalists, prohibited the reading of his works. In philosophy Buridan was a rationalist, and followed Occam in denying all objective reality to universals, which he regarded as mere words. The aim of his logic is represented as having been the devising of rules for the discovery of syllogistic middle terms; this system for aiding slow-witted persons became known as the pons asinorum. The parts of logic which he treated with most minuteness are modal propositions and modal syllogisms. In commenting on Aristotle's Ethics he dealt in a very independent manner with the question of free will, his conclusions being remarkably similar to those of John Locke. The only liberty which he admits is a certain power of suspending the deliberative process and determining the direction of the intellect. Otherwise the will is entirely dependent on the view of the mind, the last result of examination. The comparison of the will unable to act between two equally balanced motives to an ass dying of hunger between two equal and equidistant bundles of hay is not found in his works, and may have been invented by his opponents to ridicule his determinism. That he was not the originator of the theory known as "liberty of indifference" (liberum arbitrium indifferentiae) is shown in G. Fonsegrive's Essai sur le libre arbitre, pp. 119, 199 (1887).

His works are:—Summula de dialectica (Paris, 1487); Compendium logicae (Venice, 1489); Quaestiones in viii. libros physicorum (Paris, 1516); In Aristotelis Metaphysica (1518); Quaestiones in x. libros ethicorum Aristotelis (Paris, 1489; Oxford, 1637); Quaestiones in viii. libros politicorum Aristotelis (1500). See K. Prantl's Geschichte der Logik, bk. iv. 14-38; Stöckl's Geschichte der Philosophie des Mittelalters, ii. 1023-1028; Herzog-Hauck, Realencyklopadie, s.v. (1897).

BURKE, EDMUND (1729-1797), British statesman and political writer. His is one of the greatest names in the history of political literature. There have been many more important statesmen, for he was never tried in a position of supreme responsibility. There have been many more effective orators, for lack of imaginative suppleness prevented him from penetrating to the inner mind of his hearers; defects in delivery weakened the intrinsic persuasiveness of his reasoning; and he had not that commanding authority of character and personality which has so often been the secret of triumphant eloquence. There have been many subtler, more original and more systematic thinkers about the conditions of the social union. But no one that ever lived used the general ideas of the thinker more successfully to judge the particular problems of the statesman. No one has ever come so close to the details of practical politics, and at the same time remembered that these can only be understood and only dealt with by the aid of the broad conceptions of political philosophy. And what is more than all for perpetuity of fame, he was one of the great masters of the high and difficult art of elaborate composition.

A certain doubtfulness hangs over the circumstances of Burke's life previous to the opening of his public career. The very date of his birth is variously stated. The most probable opinion is that he was born at Dublin on the 12th of January 1729, new style. Of his family we know little more than his father was a Protestant attorney, practising in Dublin, and that his mother was a Catholic, a member of the family of Nagle. He had at least one sister, from whom descended the only existing representatives of Burke's family; and he had at least two brothers, Garret Burke and Richard Burke, the one older and the other younger than Edmund. The sister, afterwards Mrs French, was brought up and remained throughout life in the religious faith of her mother; Edmund and his brothers followed that of their father. In 1741 the three brothers were sent to school at Ballitore in the county of Kildare, kept by Abraham Shackleton, an Englishman, and a member of the Society of Friends. He appears to have been an excellent teacher and a good and pious man. Burke always looked back on his own connexion with the school at Ballitore as among the most fortunate circumstances of his life. Between himself and a son of his instructor there sprang up a close and affectionate friendship, and, unlike so many of the exquisite attachments of youth, this was not choked by the dust of life, nor parted by divergence of pursuit. Richard Shackleton was endowed with a grave, pure and tranquil nature, constant and austere, yet not without those gentle elements that often redeem the drier qualities of his religious persuasion. When Burke had become one of the most famous men in Europe, no visitor to his house was more welcome than the friend with whom long years before he had tried poetic flights, and exchanged all the sanguine confidences of boyhood. And we are touched to think of the simple-minded guest secretly praying, in the solitude of his room in the fine house at Beaconsfield, that the way of his anxious and overburdened host might be guided by a divine hand.

In 1743 Burke became a student at Trinity College, Dublin, where Oliver Goldsmith was also a student at the same time. But the serious pupil of Abraham Shackleton would not be likely to see much of the wild and squalid sizar. Henry Flood, who was two years younger than Burke, had gone to complete his education at Oxford. Burke, like Goldsmith, achieved no academic distinction. His character was never at any time of the academic cast. The minor accuracies, the limitation of range, the treading and re-treading of the same small patch of ground, the concentration of interest in success before a board of examiners, were all uncongenial to a nature of exuberant intellectual curiosity and of strenuous and self-reliant originality. His knowledge of Greek and Latin was never thorough, nor had he any turn for critical niceties. He could quote Homer and Pindar, and he had read Aristotle. Like others who have gone through the conventional course of instruction, he kept a place in his memory for the various charms of Virgil and Horace, of Tacitus and Ovid; but the master whose page by night and by day he turned with devout hand, was the copious, energetic, flexible, diversified and brilliant genius of the declamations for Archias the poet and for Milo, against Catiline and against Antony, the author of the disputations at Tusculum and the orations against Verres. Cicero was ever to him the mightiest of the ancient names. In English literature Milton seems to have been more familiar to him than Shakespeare, and Spenser was perhaps more of a favourite with him than either.

It is too often the case to be a mere accident that men who become eminent for wide compass of understanding and penetrating comprehension, are in their adolescence unsettled and desultory. Of this Burke is a signal illustration. He left Trinity in 1748, with no great stock of well-ordered knowledge. He neither derived the benefits nor suffered the drawbacks of systematic intellectual discipline.

After taking his degree at Dublin he went in the year 1750 to London to keep terms at the Temple. The ten years that followed were passed in obscure industry. Burke was always extremely reserved about his private affairs. All that we know of Burke exhibits him as inspired by a resolute pride, a certain stateliness and imperious elevation of mind. Such a character, while free from any weak shame about the shabby necessities of early struggles, yet is naturally unwilling to make them prominent in after life. There is nothing dishonourable in such an inclination. "I was not swaddled and rocked and dandled into a legislator," wrote Burke when very near the end of his days: "Nitor in adversum is the motto for a man like me. At every step of my progress in life (for in every step I was traversed and opposed), and at every turnpike I met, I was obliged to show my passport. Otherwise no rank, no toleration even, for me."

All sorts of whispers have been circulated by idle or malicious gossip about Burke's first manhood. He is said to have been one of the numerous lovers of his fascinating countrywoman, Margaret Woffington. It is hinted that he made a mysterious visit to the American colonies. He was for years accused of having gone over to the Church of Rome, and afterwards recanting. There is not a tittle of positive evidence for these or any of the other statements to Burke's discredit. The common story that he was a candidate for Adam Smith's chair of moral philosophy at Glasgow, when Hume was rejected in favour of an obscure nobody (1751), can be shown to be wholly false. Like a great many other youths with an eminent destiny before them, Burke conceived a strong distaste for the profession of the law. His father, who was an attorney of substance, had a distaste still stronger for so vagrant a profession as letters were in that day. He withdrew the annual allowance, and Burke set to work to win for himself by indefatigable industry and capability in the public interest that position of power or pre-eminence which his detractors acquired either by accident of birth and connexions or else by the vile arts of political intrigue. He began at the bottom of the ladder, mixing with the Bohemian society that haunted the Temple, practising oratory in the free and easy debating societies of Covent Garden and the Strand, and writing for the booksellers.

In 1756 he made his first mark by a satire upon Bolingbroke entitled A Vindication of Natural Society. It purported to be a posthumous work from the pen of Bolingbroke, and to present a view of the miseries and evils arising to mankind from every species of artificial society. The imitation of the fine style of that magnificent writer but bad patriot is admirable. As a satire the piece is a failure, for the simple reason that the substance of it might well pass for a perfectly true, no less than a very eloquent statement of social blunders and calamities. Such acute critics as Chesterfield and Warburton thought the performance serious. Rousseau, whose famous discourse on the evils of civilization had appeared six years before, would have read Burke's ironical vindication of natural society without a suspicion of its irony. There have indeed been found persons who insist that the Vindication was a really serious expression of the writer's own opinions. This is absolutely incredible, for various reasons. Burke felt now, as he did thirty years later, that civil institutions cannot wisely or safely be measured by the tests of pure reason. His sagacity discerned that the rationalism by which Bolingbroke and the deistic school believed themselves to have overthrown revealed religion, was equally calculated to undermine the structure of political government. This was precisely the actual course on which speculation was entering in France at that moment. His Vindication is meant to be a reduction to an absurdity. The rising revolutionary school in France, if they had read it, would have taken it for a demonstration of the theorem to be proved. The only interest of the piece for us lies in the proof which it furnishes, that at the opening of his life Burke had the same scornful antipathy to political rationalism which flamed out in such overwhelming passion at its close.

In the same year (1756) appeared the Philosophical Inquiry into the Origin of our Ideas on the Sublime and Beautiful, a crude and narrow performance in many respects, yet marked by an independent use of the writer's mind, and not without fertile suggestion. It attracted the attention of the rising aesthetic school in Germany. Lessing set about the translation and annotation of it, and Moses Mendelssohn borrowed from Burke's speculation at least one of the most fruitful and important ideas of his own influential theories on the sentiments. In England the Inquiry had considerable vogue, but it has left no permanent trace in the development of aesthetic thought.

Burke's literary industry in town was relieved by frequent excursions to the western parts of England, in company with William Burke. There was a lasting intimacy between the two namesakes, and they seem to have been involved together in some important passages of their lives; but we have Edmund Burke's authority for believing that they were probably not kinsmen. The seclusion of these rural sojourns, originally dictated by delicate health, was as wholesome to the mind as to the body. Few men, if any, have ever acquired a settled mental habit of surveying human affairs broadly, of watching the play of passion, interest, circumstance, in all its comprehensiveness, and of applying the instruments of general conceptions and wide principles to its interpretation with respectable constancy, unless they have at some early period of their manhood resolved the greater problems of society in independence and isolation. By 1756 the cast of Burke's opinions was decisively fixed, and they underwent no radical change.

He began a series of Hints on the Drama. He wrote a portion of an Abridgment of the History of England, and brought it down as far as the reign of John. It included, as was natural enough in a warm admirer of Montesquieu, a fragment on law, of which he justly said that it ought to be the leading science in every well-ordered commonwealth. Burke's early interest in America was shown by an Account of the European Settlements on that continent. Such works were evidently a sign that his mind was turning away from abstract speculation to the great political and economic fields, and to the more visible conditions of social stability and the growth of nations. This interest in the concrete phenomena of society inspired him with the idea of the Annual Register (1759), which he designed to present a broad grouping of the chief movements of each year. The execution was as excellent as the conception, and if we reflect that it was begun in the midst of that momentous war which raised England to her climax of territorial greatness in East and West, we may easily realize how the task of describing these portentous and far-reaching events would be likely to strengthen Burke's habits of wide and laborious observation, as well as to give him firmness and confidence in the exercise of his own judgment. Dodsley gave him £100 for each annual volume, and the sum was welcome enough, for towards the end of 1756 Burke had married. His wife was the daughter of a Dr Nugent, a physician at Bath. She is always spoken of by his friends as a mild, reasonable and obliging person, whose amiability and gentle sense did much to soothe the too nervous and excitable temperament of her husband. She had been brought up, there is good reason to believe, as a Catholic, and she was probably a member of that communion at the time of her marriage. Dr Nugent eventually took up his residence with his son-in-law in London, and became a popular member of that famous group of men of letters and artists whom Boswell has made so familiar and so dear to all later generations. Burke, however, had no intention of being dependent. His consciousness of his own powers animated him with a most justifiable ambition, if ever there was one, to play a part in the conduct of national affairs. Friends shared this ambition on his behalf; one of these was Lord Charlemont. He introduced Burke to William Gerard Hamilton (1759), now only remembered by the nickname "single-speech," derived from the circumstance of his having made a single brilliant speech in the House of Commons, which was followed by years of almost unbroken silence. Hamilton was by no means devoid of sense and acuteness, but in character he was one of the most despicable men then alive. There is not a word too many nor too strong in the description of him by one of Burke's friends, as "a sullen, vain, proud, selfish, cankered-hearted, envious reptile." The reptile's connexion, however, was for a time of considerable use to Burke. When he was made Irish secretary, Burke accompanied him to Dublin, and there learnt Oxenstiern's eternal lesson, that awaits all who penetrate behind the scenes of government, quam parva sapientia mundus regitur.

The penal laws against the Catholics, the iniquitous restrictions on Irish trade and industry, the selfish factiousness of the parliament, the jobbery and corruption of administration, the absenteeism of the landlords, and all the other too familiar elements of that mischievous and fatal system, were then in full force. As was shown afterwards, they made an impression upon Burke that was never effaced. So much iniquity and so much disorder may well have struck deep on one whose two chief political sentiments were a passion for order and a passion for justice. He may have anticipated with something of remorse the reflection of a modern historian, that the absenteeism of her landlords has been less of a curse to Ireland than the absenteeism of her men of genius. At least he was never an absentee in heart. He always took the interest of an ardent patriot in his unfortunate country; and, as we shall see, made more than one weighty sacrifice on behalf of the principles which he deemed to be bound up with her welfare.

When Hamilton retired from his post, Burke accompanied him back to London, with a pension of £300 a year on the Irish Establishment. This modest allowance he hardly enjoyed for more than a single year. His patron having discovered the value of so laborious and powerful a subaltern, wished to bind Burke permanently to his service. Burke declined to sell himself into final bondage of this kind. When Hamilton continued to press his odious pretensions they quarrelled (1765), and Burke threw up his pension. He soon received a more important piece of preferment than any which he could ever have procured through Hamilton.

The accession of George III. to the throne in 1760 had been followed by the disgrace of Pitt, the dismissal of Newcastle, and the rise of Bute. These events marked the resolution of the court to change the political system which had been created by the Revolution of 1688. That system placed the government of the country in the hands of a territorial oligarchy, composed of a few families of large possessions, fairly enlightened principles, and shrewd political sense. It had been preserved by the existence of a Pretender. The two first kings of the house of Hanover could only keep the crown on their own heads by conciliating the Revolution families and accepting Revolution principles. By 1760 all peril to the dynasty was at an end. George III., or those about him, insisted on substituting for the aristocratic division of political power a substantial concentration of it in the hands of the sovereign. The ministers were no longer to be the members of a great party, acting together in pursuance of a common policy accepted by them all as a united body; they were to become nominees of the court, each holding himself answerable not to his colleagues but to the king, separately, individually and by department. George III. had before his eyes the government of his cousin the great Frederick; but not every one can bend the bow of Ulysses, and, apart from difference of personal capacity and historic tradition, he forgot that a territorial and commercial aristocracy cannot be dealt with in the spirit of the barrack and the drill-ground. But he made the attempt, and resistance to that attempt supplies the keynote to the first twenty-five years of Burke's political life.

Along with the change in system went high-handed and absolutist tendencies in policy. The first stage of the new experiment was very short. Bute, in a panic at the storm of unpopularity that menaced him, resigned in 1763. George Grenville and the less enlightened section of the Whigs took his place. They proceeded to tax the American colonists, to interpose vexatiously against their trade, to threaten the liberty of the subject at home by general warrants, and to stifle the liberty of public discussion by prosecutions of the press. Their arbitrary methods disgusted the nation, and the personal arrogance of the ministers at last disgusted the king. The system received a temporary check. Grenville fell, and the king was forced to deliver himself into the hands of the orthodox section of the Whigs. The marquess of Rockingham (July 10, 1765) became prime minister, and he was induced to make Burke his private secretary. Before Burke had begun his duties, an incident occurred which illustrates the character of the two men. The old duke of Newcastle, probably desiring a post for some nominee of his own, conveyed to the ear of the new minister various absurd rumours prejudicial to Burke,—that he was an Irish papist, that his real name was O'Bourke, that he had been a Jesuit, that he was an emissary from St Omer's. Lord Rockingham repeated these tales to Burke, who of course denied them with indignation. His chief declared himself satisfied, but Burke, from a feeling that the indispensable confidence between them was impaired, at once expressed a strong desire to resign his post. Lord Rockingham prevailed upon him to reconsider his resolve, and from that day until Lord Rockingham's death in 1782, their relations were those of the closest friendship and confidence.

The first Rockingham administration only lasted a year and a few days, ending in July 1766. The uprightness and good sense of its leaders did not compensate for the weakness of their political connexions. They were unable to stand against the coldness of the king, against the hostility of the powerful and selfish faction of Bedford Whigs, and, above all, against the towering predominance of William Pitt. That Pitt did not join them is one of the many fatal miscarriages of history, as it is one of the many serious reproaches to be made against that extraordinary man's chequered and uneven course. An alliance between Pitt and the Rockingham party was the surest guarantee of a wise and liberal policy towards the colonies. He went further than they did, in holding, like Lord Camden, the doctrine that taxation went with representation, and that therefore parliament had no right to tax the unrepresented colonists. The ministry asserted, what no competent jurist would now think of denying, that parliament is sovereign; but they went heartily with Pitt in pronouncing the exercise of the right of taxation in the case of the American colonists to be thoroughly impolitic and inexpedient. No practical difference, therefore, existed upon the important question of the hour. But Pitt's prodigious egoism, stimulated by the mischievous counsels of men of the stamp of Lord Shelburne, prevented the fusion of the only two sections of the Whig party that were at once able, enlightened and disinterested enough to carry on the government efficiently, to check the arbitrary temper of the king, and to command the confidence of the nation. Such an opportunity did not return.

The ministerial policy towards the colonies was defended by Burke with splendid and unanswerable eloquence. He had been returned to the House of Commons for the pocket borough of Wendover, and his first speech (January 27, 1766) was felt to be the rising of a new light. For the space of a quarter of a century, from this time down to 1790, Burke was one of the chief guides and inspirers of a revived Whig party. The "age of small factions" was now succeeded by an age of great principles, and selfish ties of mere families and persons were transformed into a union resting on common conviction and patriotic aims. It was Burke who did more than any one else to give to the Opposition, under the first half of the reign of George III., this stamp of elevation and grandeur. Before leaving office the Rockingham government repealed the Stamp Act; confirmed the personal liberty of the subject by forcing on the House of Commons one resolution against general warrants, and another against the seizure of papers; and relieved private houses from the intrusion of officers of excise, by repealing the cider tax. Nothing so good was done in an English parliament for nearly twenty years to come. George Grenville, whom the Rockinghams had displaced, and who was bitterly incensed at their formal reversal of his policy, printed a pamphlet to demonstrate his own wisdom and statesmanship. Burke replied in his Observations on a late Publication on the Present State of the Nation (1769), in which he showed for the first time that he had not only as much knowledge of commerce and finance, and as firm a hand, in dealing with figures as Grenville himself, but also a broad, general and luminous way of conceiving and treating politics, in which neither then nor since has he had any rival among English publicists.

It is one of the perplexing points in Burke's private history to know how he lived during these long years of parliamentary opposition. It is certainly not altogether mere impertinence to ask of a public man how he gets what he lives upon, for independence of spirit, which is so hard to the man who lays his head on the debtor's pillow, is the prime virtue in such men. Probity in money is assuredly one of the keys to character, though we must be very careful in ascertaining and proportioning all the circumstances. Now, in 1769, Burke bought an estate at Beaconsfield, in the county of Buckingham. It was about 600 acres in extent, was worth some £500 a year, and cost £22,000. People have been asking ever since how the penniless man of letters was able to raise so large a sum in the first instance, and how he was able to keep up a respectable establishment afterwards. The suspicions of those who are never sorry to disparage the great have been of various kinds. Burke was a gambler, they hint, in Indian stock, like his kinsmen Richard and William, and like Lord Verney, his political patron at Wendover. Perhaps again, his activity on behalf of Indian princes, like the raja of Tanjore, was not disinterested and did not go unrewarded. The answer to all these calumnious innuendoes is to be found in documents and title-deeds of decisive authority, and is simple enough. It is, in short, this. Burke inherited a small property from his elder brother, which he realized. Lord Rockingham advanced him a certain sum (£6000). The remainder, amounting to no less than two-thirds of the purchase-money, was raised on mortgage, and was never paid off during Burke's life. The rest of the story is equally simple, but more painful. Burke made some sort of income out of his 600 acres; he was for a short time agent for New York, with a salary of £700; he continued to work at the Annual Register down to 1788. But, when all is told, he never made as much as he spent; and in spite of considerable assistance from Lord Rockingham, amounting it is sometimes said to as much as £30,000, Burke, like the younger Pitt, got every year deeper into debt. Pitt's debts were the result of a wasteful indifference to his private affairs. Burke, on the contrary, was assiduous and orderly, and had none of the vices of profusion. But he had that quality which Aristotle places high among the virtues—the noble mean of Magnificence, standing midway between the two extremes of vulgar ostentation and narrow pettiness. He was indifferent to luxury, and sought to make life, not commodious nor soft, but high and dignified in a refined way. He loved art, filled his house with statues and pictures, and extended a generous patronage to the painters. He was a collector of books, and, as Crabbe and less conspicuous men discovered, a helpful friend to their writers. Guests were ever welcome at his board; the opulence of his mind and the fervid copiousness of his talk naturally made the guests of such a man very numerous. Non invideo equidem, miror magis, was Johnson's good-natured remark, when he was taken over his friend's fine house and pleasant gardens. Johnson was of a very different type. There was something in this external dignity which went with Burke's imperious spirit, his spacious imagination, his turn for all things stately and imposing. We may say, if we please, that Johnson had the far truer and loftier dignity of the two; but we have to take such men as Burke with the defects that belong to their qualities. And there was no corruption in Burke's outlay. When the Pitt administration was formed in 1766, he might have had office, and Lord Rockingham wished him to accept it, but he honourably took his fate with the party. He may have spent £3000 a year, where he would have been more prudent to spend only £2000. But nobody was wronged; his creditors were all paid in time, and his hands were at least clean of traffic in reversions, clerkships, tellerships and all the rest of the rich sinecures which it was thought no shame in those days for the aristocracy of the land and the robe to wrangle for, and gorge themselves upon, with the fierce voracity of famishing wolves. The most we can say is that Burke, like Pitt, was too deeply absorbed in beneficent service in the affairs of his country, to have for his own affairs the solicitude that would have been prudent.

In the midst of intense political preoccupations, Burke always found time to keep up his intimacy with the brilliant group of his earlier friends. He was one of the commanding figures at the club at the Turk's Head, with Reynolds and Garrick, Goldsmith and Johnson. The old sage who held that the first Whig was the Devil, was yet compelled to forgive Burke's politics for the sake of his magnificent gifts. "I would not talk to him of the Rockingham party," he used to say, "but I love his knowledge, his genius, his diffusion and affluence of conversation." And everybody knows Johnson's vivid account of him: "Burke, Sir, is such a man that if you met him for the first time in the street, where you were stopped by a drove of oxen, and you and he stepped aside to take shelter but for five minutes, he'd talk to you in such a manner that when you parted you would say, 'This is an extraordinary man.'" They all grieved that public business should draw to party what was meant for mankind. They deplored that the nice and difficult test of answering Berkeley had not been undertaken, as was once intended, by Burke, and sighed to think what an admirable display of subtlety and brilliance such a contention would have afforded them, had not politics "turned him from active philosophy aside." There was no jealousy in this. They did not grudge Burke being the first man in the House of Commons, for they admitted that he would have been the first man anywhere.

With all his hatred for the book-man in politics, Burke owed much of his own distinction to that generous richness and breadth of judgment which had been ripened in him by literature and his practice in it. He showed that books are a better preparation for statesmanship than early training in the subordinate posts and among the permanent officials of a public department. There is no copiousness of literary reference in his work, such as over-abounded in the civil and ecclesiastical publicists of the 17th century. Nor can we truly say that there is much, though there is certainly some, of that tact which literature is alleged to confer on those who approach it in a just spirit and with the true gift. The influence of literature on Burke lay partly in the direction of emancipation from the mechanical formulae of practical politics; partly in the association which it engendered, in a powerful understanding like his, between politics and the moral forces of the world, and between political maxims and the old and great sentences of morals; partly in drawing him, even when resting his case on prudence and expediency, to appeal to the widest and highest sympathies; partly, and more than all, in opening his thoughts to the many conditions, possibilities and "varieties of untried being," in human character and situation, and so giving an incomparable flexibility to his methods of political approach.

This flexibility is not to be found in his manner of composition. That derives its immense power from other sources; from passion, intensity, imagination, size, truth, cogency of logical reason. Those who insist on charm, on winningness in style, on subtle harmonies and fine exquisiteness of suggestion, are disappointed in Burke: they even find him stiff and over-coloured. And there are blemishes of this kind. His banter is nearly always ungainly, his wit blunt, as Johnson said, and often unseasonable. As is usual with a man who has not true humour, Burke is also without true pathos. The thought of wrong or misery moved him less to pity for the victim than to anger against the cause. Again, there are some gratuitous and unredeemed vulgarities; some images that make us shudder. But only a literary fop can be detained by specks like these.

The varieties of Burke's literary or rhetorical method are very striking. It is almost incredible that the superb imaginative amplification of the description of Hyder Ali's descent upon the Carnatic should be from the same pen as the grave, simple, unadorned Address to the King (1777), where each sentence falls on the ear with the accent of some golden-tongued oracle of the wise gods. His stride is the stride of a giant, from the sentimental beauty of the picture of Marie Antoinette at Versailles, or the red horror of the tale of Debi Sing in Rungpore, to the learning, positiveness and cool judicial mastery of the Report on the Lords' Journals (1794), which Philip Francis, no mean judge, declared on the whole to be the "most eminent and extraordinary" of all his productions. But even in the coolest and driest of his pieces there is the mark of greatness, of grasp, of comprehension. In all its varieties Burke's style is noble, earnest, deep-flowing, because his sentiment was lofty and fervid, and went with sincerity and ardent disciplined travail of judgment. He had the style of his subjects; the amplitude, the weightiness, the laboriousness, the sense, the high flight, the grandeur, proper to a man dealing with imperial themes, with the fortunes of great societies, with the sacredness of law, the freedom of nations, the justice of rulers. Burke will always be read with delight and edification, because in the midst of discussions on the local and the accidental, he scatters apophthegms that take us into the regions of lasting wisdom. In the midst of the torrent of his most strenuous and passionate deliverances, he suddenly rises aloof from his immediate subject, and in all tranquillity reminds us of some permanent relation of things, some enduring truth of human life or human society. We do not hear the organ tones of Milton, for faith and freedom had other notes in the 18th century. There is none of the complacent and wise-browed sagacity of Bacon, for Burke's were days of personal strife and fire and civil division. We are not exhilarated by the cheerfulness, the polish, the fine manners of Bolingbroke, for Burke had an anxious conscience, and was earnest and intent that the good should triumph. And yet Burke is among the greatest of those who have wrought marvels in the prose of our English tongue.

Not all the transactions in which Burke was a combatant could furnish an imperial theme. We need not tell over again the story of Wilkes and the Middlesex election. The Rockingham ministry had been succeeded by a composite government, of which it was intended that Pitt, now made Lord Chatham and privy seal, should be the real chief. Chatham's health and mind fell into disorder almost immediately after the ministry had been formed. The duke of Grafton was its nominal head, but party ties had been broken, the political connexions of the ministers were dissolved, and, in truth, the king was now at last a king indeed, who not only reigned but governed. The revival of high doctrines of prerogative in the crown was accompanied by a revival of high doctrines of privilege in the House of Commons, and the ministry was so smitten with weakness and confusion as to be unable to resist the current of arbitrary policy, and not many of them were even willing to resist it. The unconstitutional prosecution of Wilkes was followed by the fatal recourse to new plans for raising taxes in the American colonies. These two points made the rallying ground of the new Whig opposition. Burke helped to smooth matters for a practical union between the Rockingham party and the powerful triumvirate, composed of Chatham, whose understanding had recovered from its late disorder, and of his brothers-in-law, Lord Temple and George Grenville. He was active in urging petitions from the freeholders of the counties, protesting against the unconstitutional invasion of the right of election. And he added a durable masterpiece to political literature in a pamphlet which he called Thoughts on the Cause of the Present Discontents (1770). The immediate object of this excellent piece was to hold up the court scheme of weak, divided and dependent administrations in the light of its real purpose and design; to describe the distempers which had been engendered in parliament by the growth of royal influence and the faction of the king's friends; to show that the newly formed Whig party had combined for truly public ends, and was no mere family knot like the Grenvilles and the Bedfords; and, finally, to press for the hearty concurrence both of public men and of the nation at large in combining against "a faction ruling by the private instructions of a court against the general sense of the people." The pamphlet was disliked by Chatham on the one hand, on no reasonable grounds that we can discover; it was denounced by the extreme popular party of the Bill of Rights, on the other hand, for its moderation and conservatism. In truth, there is as strong a vein of conservative feeling in the pamphlet of 1770 as in the more resplendent pamphlet of 1790. "Our constitution," he said, "stands on a nice equipoise, with steep precipices and deep waters upon all sides of it. In removing it from a dangerous leaning towards one side, there may be a risk of oversetting it on the other. Every project of a material change in a government so complicated as ours is a matter full of difficulties; in which a considerate man will not be too ready to decide, a prudent man too ready to undertake, or an honest man too ready to promise." Neither now nor ever had Burke any other real conception of a polity for England than government by the territorial aristocracy in the interests of the nation at large, and especially in the interests of commerce, to the vital importance of which in our economy he was always keenly and wisely alive. The policy of George III., and the support which it found among men who were weary of Whig factions, disturbed this scheme, and therefore Burke denounced both the court policy and the court party with all his heart and all his strength.