Page:Dictionary of National Biography, Second Supplement, volume 1.djvu/286

 among contemporary or past philanthropists. She became in her time a great and honoured ‘English institution,’ and most of her enterprises bore lasting fruit. Her example not only gave an immense stimulus to charitable work among the rich and fashionable but suggested solutions of many social problems.

In person the baroness was tall and slender, stately yet gentle and graceful in manner, and habitually wearing an expression of gravity and quiet composure, which was often brightened by subtle play of humour. She kept under stern control a highly strung nervous system, and until her closing years her physical strength enabled her to endure enormous labour without undue strain. There are portraits of the baroness by Stump about 1840 (head); by J. Jacob about 1846; two by J. J. Masquerier; by J. R. Swinton in 1863, engraved by George Zobel in 1874; by Edwin Long, R.A., in 1883. She was also painted with Mrs. Brown by James Drummond in 1874. There are also miniatures, by Stewart when four years old, by Jagger in 1826, and by Sir W. C. Ross, R.A., in 1847; and marble busts by William Brodie in 1874, and by G. C. Adams. All these are in the collection of Mr. Burdett-Coutts at 1 Stratton Street. A cartoon appeared in ‘Vanity Fair’ in 1883.

 BURDON, JOHN SHAW (1826–1907), missionary, bishop of Victoria, Hongkong, and Chinese scholar, only son of James Burdon, by Isabella his second wife, was born at Auchterarder in Perthshire on Dec. 1826. On his father's early death he was brought up by an uncle, who kept a school at Liverpool, where he was over-worked. From Liverpool he went to Glasgow. In 1850 he was accepted as a missionary by the Church Missionary Society, and spent two years at their training college at Islington. He was ordained deacon by the bishop of London on 19 Dec. 1852.

He sailed for Shanghai on 20 July 1853, and was ordained priest by the bishop of Victoria, Hongkong, on 8 Oct. 1854. Meanwhile the T'ai-p'ing rebels were menacing the whole empire. Shanghai was taken by them just before Burden's arrival, and he occupied himself with long and very hazardous journeys into the surrounding country. There he preached, interviewed the iconoclastic and professedly half-Christian rebel leaders, and opened new mission stations. From Jan. to July 1859 he stayed at Hang-chow ; but the people proved inaccessible, and he returned to the coast. In 1860 he made a second attempt on Hang-chow, but was obliged to fall back on Shaohsing, where he worked until late in 1861. In December 1861 he was in Ningpo with Mr. and Mrs. Russell, G. E. Moule, and others when that city was captured by the rebels. Early in 1862 he went to Peking as pioneer of the Church of England at the capital, and after eleven years of hard work and domestic sorrow he returned to England on 22 May 1864.

In September 1865 he was again in Peking, where he added to his other work the duties of chaplain to the British legation (1865-1872). In 1864 he had been appointed one of a committee of five eminent Chinese scholars to translate the New Testament into the vernacular of North China. The work, with which his name will be always associated, appeared in 1872, and has been the foundation of all subsequent revisions. In 1872 appeared also a version of the Book of Common Prayer by Burdon and (Bishop) Schereschewsky, which likewise forms the basis of all the Prayer-books since printed for the North China missions. Subsequently he prepared other editions of the Prayerbook (1879, 1890, 1893), issued a revision of the New Testament translation with H. Blodget (1889), and from 1891 to 1901 was a member of a committee for revision of the Chinese Bible.

On his election as bishop of Victoria, Hongkong, he returned to England on 25 Oct. 1873, and early next year received 