exalted station, might have been of service to his country. Disgusted with his treatment by the government, he withdrew from the army, and having married the daughter of Earl Derby, enjoyed considerable social ease. During his parliamentary career, he obtained a committee of inquiry upon Indian affairs, and moved a vote of censure upon Clive, May, 1773. He employed his leisure in literary pursuits, and was the author of the following dramas, which are occasionally elegant although without power—"The Maid of the Oaks;" "The Lord of the Manor;" "The Heiress;" and "Richard Cœur de Lion." The best of these plays is "The Heiress," which was composed at Knowsley, the seat of the earl of Derby, and was successful upon the stage. Burgoyne died on August 4, 1792.
* BURGOYNE, Sir John Fox, G.C.B., lieutenant-general and inspector-general of fortifications. This very distinguished officer entered the corps of royal engineers in the year 1798. He served in the Mediterranean, with Sir John Moore in Sweden and Portugal, and afterwards with Wellington in Spain. In subsequent years we find him employed in America; and in 1845, after other services, he was appointed inspector-general of fortifications. It was to Sir John that our illustrious duke wrote his celebrated letter on the defenceless state of Great Britain—a letter that commenced a reaction against a narrow and suicidal policy, which, under the name of the public economy, had gone far to reduce our naval and military services to a state of comparative powerlessness. Sir John took part in all the great actions occurring during the Crimean war: he had the chief direction of the siege operations against Sebastopol. Very able papers, arising out of that siege, on the relative merits of fortification by stone or earth-works, are attributed to Sir John Burgoyne.—J. P. N.
BURGSDORF, Friedrich August Ludwig von, a German naturalist, was born at Leipzig on 23d March, 1727, and died at Berlin on 19th June, 1802. He devoted much attention to arboriculture. He was a member of the Academy of Sciences of Berlin, and was director of the Brandeburg forests. His works are—"History of Trees, and directions as to their choice and cultivation;" "Forester's Manual;" "Introduction to Dendrology," &c.—J. H. B.
BURIDAN, Jean, a famous nominalist philosopher of the fourteenth century, rector of the university of Paris in the year 1347, was a native of Bethune in Artois. His end is reported to have been tragical; the wife of Phillipe le Bel, or one of his three daughters-in-law, having, it is said, gratified her spleen at the philosopher, who interfered with her royal license for sinning, by throwing him into the Seine. Buridan is remembered not only by his scholastic treatises, which were of singular reputation in their day, but by a sophism called that of "Buridan's Ass," which, although it is not a settled point whether the inventor of it was Buridan, or one of Buridan's philosophical adversaries, has, to the advantage of his fame alone, been a subject of discussion among all the historians of the schools. It will be found at length in Bayle.—J. S., G.
BURKARD WALDIS, a German poet of the sixteenth century, was probably born at Altendorf on the Werra, and died at Abterode, electorate of Hassia. From a bigoted monk, he became a zealous defender of the reformed doctrine; and travelled in Holland, Italy, and Portugal. His principal works are his fables and comic tales, partly from Æsop and other old fabulists, partly original, which first appeared at Frankfort, 1548. A great number of them have repeatedly been modernized.—K. E.
* BURKE, Sir Bernard, Ulster king-of-arms, son of John Burke, was born in London. After receiving his early education in the metropolis, he was sent to the college of Caen in Normandy, where he soon distinguished himself both in the sciences and classics. Here he remained till his education was completed, when, returning to London, he was called to the bar. He did not, however, seek general practice, but devoted himself, under the guidance of his father, to the study of genealogy and history, and took his share in the production of those works—especially "The History of the Landed Gentry of Great Britain and Ireland"—which have become the standard authorities in genealogy, and conferred on the authors a high and extensive reputation. Upon the retirement of his father in 1846, the sole labour of these works devolved upon Bernard, who, in addition, continued with unremitting industry and ability to bring out volume after volume upon genealogical and heraldic subjects, each of which won public favour, and increased his reputation. Meanwhile he did not confine himself solely to genealogy, but wrote in various periodicals of the day, and mainly conducted the Patrician, and the St. James' Magazine. The death of Sir William Betham in October, 1853, made a vacancy in the office of Ulster king-of-arms, and the high qualifications of Burke at once secured him the succession, to which he was appointed in the following month, and received the honour of knighthood early in the year 1854. A happier or more popular selection for the high and important office which Sir Bernard Burke this could not have been made. In addition to his competency as a herald and genealogist, he unites the polish of the scholar and the courtliness of the gentleman, with a frankness, good nature, and affability, that gain him the respect of all who have official intercourse with him, and the esteem of all who know him.—J. F. W.
BURKE, Edmund, the Right Hon., was born in Dublin on the 1st of January, 1730, and was the son of a respectable attorney, whose family came from the south of Ireland. While yet a child, he was sent to his grandfather's at Castletown-Roche in the county of Cork, near Kilcolman, the residence of the poet Spenser, receiving his first lessons from a man of the name of O'Hallaren; and in his twelfth year he was placed at the school of Ballytore, kept by a Quaker of the name of Abraham Shackleton, of whom Burke afterwards said that "he was an honour to his sect, though that sect was considered one of the purest." Here he already displayed those traits of character which ultimately made him one of the greatest of men. He had remarkable quickness of apprehension and great tenacity of memory, and was extremely fond of reading; delighting in acquiring stores of knowledge from even' source and of every description. While his habits were reflective, reserved, and almost solitary, he was gentle, good-natured, and obliging, with warm affections, and disposed to form strong friendships. In the spring of 1744 he entered the university of Dublin as a pensioner under Dr. Pelisier. To his college studies he was not inattentive, as is proved by the fact of his having obtained at least one prize in his senior freshman year, and a scholarship in due course; but his comprehensive mind took a far wider range of human knowledge than that prescribed by the university; and while devoting to his course only so much study as was necessary for a creditable progress, he abandoned himself to metaphysics, history, oratory, and poetry with ardour, and was noted as at once a brilliant and copious speaker, and a profound and vigorous thinker; and had already written several essays of ability, and a translation of part of the second Georgic of Virgil, which a competent critic does not hesitate to pronounce to be equal to Dryden's best execution in the same line. Burke took his degree in February, 1748, and being designed for the profession of the law, he shortly after proceeded to London, to keep his terms in the middle temple, and in 1751 he took his degree of master of arts. His health at this period was but indifferent, and he spent much of his time between 1750 and 1753 in travelling through England, in the society of men of letters, and in desultory reading. He seems to have abandoned all intention of being called to the bar, as we find him in the latter year an unsuccessful candidate for the chair of logic in Glasgow. For two years Burke continued in London, writing occasionally in periodicals, associating with Murphy, Macklin, and Garrick, with the latter of whom he formed a lasting friendship. In 1756 he published anonymously his "Vindication of Natural Society," an able essay, that attracted considerable notice, in which he exposed the infidel opinions of the time by following them out to their extreme results. The celebrated "Essay on the Sublime and Beautiful" followed soon after. No work of the day so suddenly sprang into popularity; it obtained for its author the most unqualified admiration, and the unknown young man became a literary celebrity. The great and the learned sought his acquaintance; and amongst his friends he reckoned, ere long, Reynolds, Soame Jenyns, Lord Littleton, Warburton, Hume, and above all. Dr. Johnson. Chary as the latter was of his praise in general, he was liberal of it in the case of Burke, declaring that he was "the only man whose common conversation corresponds with the general fame which he has in the world;" and he often repeated that "no man of sense would meet Mr. Burke by accident under a gateway without being convinced that he was the first man in England." Burke had devoted a vast deal of time and thought to this work, which, indeed, he had commenced in his eighteenth year, and his health was now far from robust from the effects of over mental exertion. In this state he put himself under the
