er of the London County Council for Battersea; and has been twice
over chosen to represent that constituency in Parliament; _b_. 1858.

BURNS, ROBERT, celebrated Scottish poet, born at Alloway, near Ayr,
in 1759, son of an honest, intelligent peasant, who tried farming in a
small way, but did not prosper; tried farming himself on his father's
decease in 1784, but took to rhyming by preference; driven desperate in
his circumstances, meditated emigrating to Jamaica, and published a few
poems he had composed to raise money for that end; realised a few pounds
thereby, and was about to set sail, when friends and admirers rallied
round him and persuaded him to stay; he was invited to Edinburgh; his
poems were reprinted, and money came in; soon after he married, and took
a farm, but failing, accepted the post of exciseman in Dumfries; fell
into bad health, and died in 1796, aged 37. "His sun shone as through a
tropical tornado, and the pale shadow of death eclipsed it at noon.... To
the ill-starred Burns was given the power of making man's life more
venerable, but that of wisely guiding his own life was not given.... And
that spirit, which might have soared could it but have walked, soon sank
to the dust, its glorious faculties trodden under foot in the blossom;
and died, we may almost say, without ever having lived." See Carlyle's
"Miscellanies" for by far the justest and wisest estimate of both the man
and the poet that has yet by any one been said or sung. He is at his best
in his "Songs," he says, which he thinks "by far the best that Britain
has yet produced.... In them," he adds, "he has found a tune and words
for every mood of man's heart; in hut and hall, as the heart unfolds
itself in many-coloured joy and woe of existence, the _name_, the _voice_
of that joy and that woe, is the name and voice which Burns has given
them."

BURRA-BURRA, a copper-mine in S. Australia, about 103 m. NE. of
Adelaide.

BURRARD INLET, an inlet of river Fraser, in British Columbia,
forming one of the best harbours on the Pacific coast.

BURRITT, ELIHU, a blacksmith, born in Connecticut; devoted to the
study of languages, of which he knew many, both ancient and modern; best
known as the unwearied Advocate of Peace all over America and a great
part of Europe, on behalf of which he ruined his voice (1810-1879).

BURROUGHS, JOHN, popular author, born in New York; a farmer, a
cultured man, with a great liking for country life and na