This page has been validated.
888
BUTLER, W. A.—BUTO

grandfather, headmaster of Shrewsbury school and afterwards bishop of Lichfield; Alps and Sanctuaries (1881); and two posthumous works edited by R. A. Streatfeild, The Way of All Flesh (1903), a novel; and Essays on Life, Art and Science (1904).

See Samuel Butler, Records and Memorials (1903), by R. A. Streatfeild, a collection printed for private circulation, the most important article included being one by H. Festing Jones originally published in The Eagle (Cambridge, December 1902).


BUTLER, WILLIAM ARCHER (1814–1848), Irish historian of philosophy, was born at Annerville, near Clonmel in Ireland, probably in 1814. His father was a Protestant, his mother a Roman Catholic, and he was brought up as a Catholic. As a boy he was imaginative and poetical, and some of his early verses were remarkable. While yet at Clonmel school he became a Protestant. Later he entered Trinity College, Dublin, where he had a brilliant career. He specially devoted himself to literature and metaphysics, and was noted for the beauty of his style. In 1834 he gained the ethical moderatorship, newly instituted by Provost Lloyd, and continued in residence at college. In 1837 he decided to enter the Church, and in the same year he was elected to the professorship of moral philosophy, specially founded for him through Lloyd’s exertions. About the same time he was presented to the prebend of Clondahorky, Donegal, and resided there when not called by his professorial duties to Dublin. In 1842 he was promoted to the rectory of Raymochy. He died on the 5th of July 1848. His Sermons (2 vols., 1849) were remarkably brilliant and forceful. The Lectures on the History of Ancient Philosophy, edited by W. Hepworth Thompson (2 vols., 1856; 2nd ed., 1 vol. 1875), take a high place among the few British works on the history of philosophy. The introductory lectures, and those on the early Greek thinkers, though they evidence wide reading, do not show the complete mastery that is found in Schwegler or Zeller; but the lectures on Plato are of considerable value. Among his other writings were papers in the Dublin University Magazine (1834–1837); and “Letters on Development” (in the Irish Ecclesiastical Journal, 1845), a reply to Newman’s famous Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine.

See Memoir of W. A. Butler, prefixed by Rev. J. Woodward to first series of Sermons.


BUTLER, SIR WILLIAM FRANCIS (1838–  ), British soldier, entered the army as an ensign in 1858, becoming captain in 1872 and major in 1874. He took part with distinction in the Red River expedition (1870–71) and the Ashanti operations of 1873–74 under Wolseley, and received the C.B. in 1874. He served with the same general in the Zulu War (brevet lieut.-colonel), the campaign of Tel-el-Kebir, after which he was made an aide-de-camp to the queen, and the Sudan 1884–85, being employed as colonel on the staff 1885, and brigadier-general 1885–1886. In the latter year he was made a K.C.B. He was colonel on the staff in Egypt 1890–1892, and brigadier-general there until 1892, when he was promoted major-general and stationed at Aldershot, after which he commanded the south-eastern district. In 1898 he succeeded General Goodenough as commander-in-chief in South Africa, with the local rank of lieutenant-general. For a short period (Dec. 1898–Feb. 1899), during the absence of Sir Alfred Milner in England, he acted as high commissioner, and as such and subsequently in his military capacity he expressed views on the subject of the probabilities of war which were not approved by the home government; he was consequently ordered home to command the western district, and held this post until 1905. He also held the Aldershot command for a brief period in 1900–1901. Sir William Butler was promoted lieutenant-general in 1900. He had long been known as a descriptive writer, since his publication of The Great Lone Land (1872) and other works, and he was the biographer (1899) of Sir George Colley. He married in 1877 Miss Elizabeth Thompson, an accomplished painter of battle-scenes, notably “The Roll Call” (1874), “Quatre Bras” (1875), “Rorke’s Drift” (1881), “The Camel Corps” (1891), and “The Dawn of Waterloo” (1895).


BUTLER, a borough and the county-seat of Butler county, Pennsylvania, U.S.A., on Conoquenessing Creek, about 30 m. N. of Pittsburg. Pop. (1890) 8734; (1900) 10,853, of whom 928 were foreign-born; (1910 census) 20,728. It is served by the Pennsylvania, the Baltimore & Ohio, the Buffalo, Rochester & Pittsburg, and the Bessemer & Lake Erie railways, and is connected with Pittsburg by two electric lines. It is built on a small hill about 1010 ft. above sea-level, and commands extensive views of the surrounding valley. The Butler County hospital (1899) is located here. A fair is held in Butler annually. Oil, natural gas, clay, coal and iron abound in the vicinity, and the borough has various manufactures, including lumber, railway cars (especially of steel), paint, silk, bricks, plate-glass, bottles and oil-well tools. The value of the city’s factory products increased from $1,403,026 in 1900 to $6,832,007 in 1905, or 386.9%, this being much the greatest rate of increase shown by any city in the state having in 1900 a population of 8000 or more. Butler was selected as the site for the county-seat of the newly-formed county in 1802, was laid out in 1803, and was incorporated in the same year. The county and the borough were named in honour of General Richard Butler, a soldier in the War of Independence and leader of the right wing of General St Clair’s army, which was sent against the Indians in 1791 and on the 4th of November was defeated, Butler being killed in the engagement.


BUTLER (through the O. Fr. bouteillier, from the Late Lat. buticularius, buticula, a bottle), a domestic servant who superintends the wine-cellar and acts as the chief male servant of a household; among his other duties are the conduct of the service of the table and the custody of the plate. The butler of a royal household was an official of high rank, whose duties, though primarily connected with the supply of wine for the royal table, varied in the different courts in which the office appears. In England, as superintendent of the importation of wine, a duty was payable to him (see Butlerage and Prisage); the butlership of Ireland, Pincerna Hiberniae, was given by John, king of England, to Theobald Walter, who added the name of Butler to his own; it then became the surname of his descendants, the earls, dukes and marquesses of Ormonde (see Butler, family, above).


BUTLERAGE AND PRISAGE. In England there was an ancient right of the crown to purveyance or pre-emption, i.e. the right of buying up provisions and other necessities for the royal household, at a valuation, even without the consent of the owner. Out of this right originated probably that of taking customs, in return for the protection and maintenance of the ports and harbours. One such customs due was that of “prisage,” the right of taking one tun of wine from every ship importing from ten to twenty tuns, and two tuns from every ship importing more than twenty tuns. This right of prisage was commuted, by a charter of Edward I. (1302), into a duty of two shillings on every tun imported by merchant strangers, and termed “butlerage,” because paid to the king’s butler. Butlerage ceased to be levied in 1809, by the Customs Consolidation Act of that year.


BUTO, the Greek name of the Egyptian goddess Uto (hierogl. W’zy·t), confused with the name of her city Buto (see Busiris). She was a cobra-goddess of the marshes, worshipped especially in the city of Buto in the north-west of the Delta, and at another Buto (Hdt. ii. 75) in the north-east of the Delta, now Tell Nebēsheh. The former city is placed by Petrie at Tell Ferain, a large and important site, but as yet yielding no inscriptions. This western Buto was the capital of the kingdom of Northern Egypt in prehistoric times before the two kingdoms were united; hence the goddess Buto was goddess of Lower Egypt and the North. To correspond to the vulture goddess (Nekhbi) of the south she sometimes is given the form of a vulture; she is also figured in human form. As a serpent she is commonly twined round a papyrus stem, which latter spells her name; and generally she wears the crown of Lower Egypt. The Greeks identified her with Leto; this may be accounted for partly by the resemblance of name, partly by the myth of her having brought up Horus in a floating island, resembling the story of Leto and Apollo on Delos. Perhaps the two myths influenced each other. Herodotus describes the temple and other sacred