BURROUGHS, JOHN (1837–), American poet and writer on natural history, was born in Roxbury, Delaware county, New York, on the 3rd of April 1837. In his earlier years he engaged in various pursuits, teaching, journalism, farming and fruit-raising, and for nine years was a clerk in the treasury department at Washington. After publishing in 1867 a volume of Notes on Walt Whitman as poet and person (a subject to which he returned in 1896 with his Whitman: a Study), he began in 1871, with Wake-Robin, a series of books on birds, flowers and rural scenes which has made him the successor of Thoreau as a popular essayist en the plants and animals environing human life. His later writings showed a more philosophic mood and a greater disposition towards literary or meditative allusion than their predecessors, but the general theme and method remained the same. His chief books, in addition to Wake-Robin, are Birds and Poets (1877), Locusts and Wild Honey (1879), Signs and Seasons (1886), and Ways of Nature (1905); these are in prose, but he wrote much also in verse, a volume of poems, Bird and Bough, being published in 1906. Winter Sunshine (1875) and Fresh Fields (1884) are sketches of travel in England and France.
A biographical sketch of Burroughs is prefixed to his Year in the Fields (new ed., 1901). A complete uniform edition of his works was issued in 1895, &c. (Riverside edition, Cambridge, Mass.).
BURSAR (Med. Lat. bursarius), literally a keeper of the bursa or purse. The word is now chiefly used of the official, usually one of the fellows, who administers the finances of a college at a university, or of the treasurer of a school or other institution. The term is also applied to the holder of “a bursary,” an exhibition at Scottish schools or universities, and also in England a scholarship or exhibition enabling a pupil of an elementary school to continue his education at a secondary school. The term “burse” (Lat. bursa, Gr. βόρσα, bag of skin) is particularly used of the embroidered purse which is one of the insignia of office of the lord high chancellor of England, and of the pouch which in the Roman Church contains the “corporal” in the service of the Mass. The “bursa” is a square case opening at one side only and covered and lined with silk or linen; one side should be of the colour of the vestments of the day.
BURSCHENSCHAFT, an association of students at the German universities. It was formed as a result of the German national sentiment awakened by the War of Liberation, its object being to foster patriotism and Christian conduct, as opposed to the particularism and low moral standard of the old Landsmannschaften. It originated at Jena, under the patronage of the grand-duke of Saxe-Weimar, and rapidly spread, the Allgemeine deutsche Burschenschaft being established in 1818. The loud political idealism of the Burschen excited the fears of the reactionary powers, which culminated after the murder of Kotzebue (q.v.) by Karl Sand in 1819, a crime inspired by a secret society among the Burschen known as the Blacks (Schwarzen). The repressive policy embodied in the Carlsbad Decrees (q.v.) was therefore directed mainly against the Burschenschaft, which none the less survived to take part in the revolutions of 1830. After the émeute at Frankfort in 1833, the association was again suppressed, but it lived on until, in 1848, all laws against it were abrogated. The Burschenschaften are now purely social and non-political societies. The Reformburschenschaften, formed since 1883 on the principle of excluding duelling, are united in the Allgemeiner deutscher Burschenbund.
BURSIAN, CONRAD (1830–1883), German philologist and archaeologist, was born at Mutzschen in Saxony, on the 14th of November 1830. On the removal of his parents to Leipzig, he received his early education at the Thomas school, and entered the university in 1847. Here he studied under Moritz Haupt and Otto Jahn until 1851, spent six months in Berlin (chiefly
to attend Böckh’s lectures), and completed his university studies at Leipzig (1852). The next three years were devoted to travelling in Belgium, France, Italy and Greece. In 1856 he became a Privat-docent, and in 1858 extraordinary professor at Leipzig;
in 1861 professor of philology and archaeology at Tübingen; in 1864 professor of classical antiquities at Zurich; in 1869 at Jena, where he was also director of the archaeological museum; in 1874 at Munich, where he remained until his death on the 21st of September 1883. His most important works are: Geographie von Griechenland (1862–1872); Beiträge zur Geschichte
der klassischen Studien im Mittelalter (1873); Geschichte der klassischen Philologie in Deutschland (1883); editions of Julius
Firmicus Maternus’ De Errore Profanarum Religionum (1856) and of Seneca’s Suasoriae (1857). The article on Greek Art in Ersch and Gruber’s Encyclopaedia is by him. Probably the work in connexion with which he is best known is the Jahresbericht über die Fortschritte der klassischen Altertumswissenschaft (1873, &c.), of which he was the founder and editor; from 1879 a Biographisches Jahrbuch für Altertumskunde was published by way of supplement, an obituary notice of Bursian, with a complete list of his writings, being in the volume for
1884.
BURSLEM, a market town of Staffordshire, England, in the Potteries district, 150 m. N.W. from London, on the North Staffordshire railway and the Grand Trunk Canal. Pop. (1891) 31,999; (1901) 38,766. In the 17th century the town was already famous for its manufacture of pottery. Here Josiah Wedgwood was born in 1730, his family having practised the manufacture in this locality for several generations, while he himself began work independently at the Ivy House pottery in 1759. He is commemorated by the Wedgwood Institute, founded in 1863. It comprises a school of art, free library, museum, picture-gallery and the free school founded in 1794. The exterior is richly and peculiarly ornamented, to show the progress of fictile art. The neighbouring towns of Stoke, Hanley and Longton are connected with Burslem by tramways. Burslem is mentioned in Domesday. Previously to 1885 it formed part of the parliamentary borough of Stoke, but it is now included in that of Hanley. It was included in the municipal borough of Stoke-on-Trent under an act of 1908.
BURTON, SIR FREDERICK WILLIAM (1816–1900), British painter and art connoisseur, the third son of Samuel Burton of Mungret, Co. Limerick, was born in Ireland in 1816. He was educated in Dublin, where his artistic studies were carried on with marked success under the direction of Mr Brocas, an able teacher, who foretold for the lad a distinguished career. That this estimate was not exaggerated was proved by Burton’s immediate success in his profession. He was elected an associate of the Royal Hibernian Academy at the age of twenty-one and an academician two years later; and in 1842 he began to exhibit at the Royal Academy. A visit to Germany and Bavaria in 1851 was the first of a long series of wanderings in various parts of Europe, which gave him a profound and intimate knowledge of the works of the Old Masters, and prepared him admirably for the duties that he undertook in 1874 when he was appointed director of the British National Gallery in succession to Sir W. Boxall, R.A. During the twenty years that he held this post he was responsible for many important purchases, among them Leonardo da Vinci’s “Virgin of the Rocks,” Raphael’s “Ansidei Madonna,” Holbein’s “Ambassadors,” Van Dyck’s equestrian portrait of Charles I., and the “Admiral Pulido Pareja,” by Velasquez; and he added largely to the noted series of Early Italian pictures in the gallery. The number of acquisitions made to the collection during his period of office amounts to not fewer than 500. His own painting, most of which was in water-colour, had more attraction for experts than for the general public. He was elected an associate of the Royal Society of Painters in Water-Colours in 1855, and a full member in the following year. He resigned in 1870, and was re-elected as an honorary member in 1886. A knighthood was conferred on him in 1884, and the degree of LL.D. of Dublin in 1889. In his youth he had strong sympathy with the “Young Ireland Party,” and was a close associate with some of its members. He died in Kensington on the 16th of March 1900.
BURTON, JOHN HILL (1809–1881), Scottish historical writer, the son of an officer in the army, was born at Aberdeen on the 22nd of August 1809. After studying at the university of his native city, he removed to Edinburgh, where he qualified for
