l Richardson's correspondence, with a biographical
notice; in 1810 a collection of the _British Novelists_ (50 vols.) with
biographical and critical notices; and in 1811 her longest poem, _Eighteen
Hundred and Eleven_, giving a gloomy view of the existing state and future
prospects of Britain. This poem anticipated Macaulay in contemplating the
prospect of a visitor from the antipodes regarding at a future day the
ruins of St Paul's from a broken arch of Blackfriars Bridge. Mrs Barbauld
died on the 9th of March 1825; her husband had died in 1808. A collected
edition of her works, with memoir, was published by her niece, Lucy Aikin,
in 2 vols., 1825.

See A. L. le Breton, _Memoir of Mrs Barbauld_ (1874); G. A. Ellis, _Life
and Letters of Mrs A. L. Barbauld_ (1874); and Lady Thackeray Ritchie, _A
Book of Sibyls_ (1883).

BARBECUE (Span. _barbacoa_), originally a framework on posts placed over a
fire on which to dry or smoke meat; hence, a gridiron for roasting whole
animals, and in Cuba an upper floor on which fruit or grain is stored. In
the United States the word means an open-air feast, either political or
social, where whole animals are roasted and eaten and hogsheads of beer and
other vast quantities of food and drink consumed.

BARBED WIRE, a protective variety of fencing, consisting usually of several
strands of wire twisted together with sharp spikes or points clinched or
fastened into the strands.

In the United States, barbed wire for fencing was originally suggested to
meet conditions existing in the western states, by reason of the large
cattle-raising industry in sections where timber was scarce. Prior to its
introduction, a No. 9 round or oval iron wire was popular on the frontier
of the United States and in South America, as a fencing material. Large
amounts were used annually for this purpose, but iron lacked strength, and
single wire strand was not fully satisfactory on account of stretching in
warm and contracting in cold weather, and of thus being broken. Cattle
would rub against a smooth fence, and this constant pressure loosened the
posts and broke the wire. To overcome this defect, ingenious people--the
most successful being farmers--set themselves to find a way by which wire
could be used and at the same time be free from destruction by the animals
it was intended to confine. This investigation resulted in the invention of
barbed wire. Soon after, automatic machinery was invented for rapidly and