Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 3.djvu/412

396 steamers run daily to Belfast, and there is also a regular service to Glasgow and to the Isle of Man. By rail there is connection with Whitehaven, and with the London and North- Western and Midland systems, with branches to the Lake district. Barrow is in the diocese of Carlisle. Besides the Church of England, which has three places of worship, there are the following churches : the Presbyterian, Congregational, Wesleyan, Methodist New Connexion, Baptist, and Primitive Methodist. The town received a charter of incorporation in 1867, when a council of sixteen was nominated, that number being doubled by an Act obtained in 1875. The supply of water conies from Kirkby Moor, the water-works as well as the gas-works being the property of the corporation. A cemetery has been provided at a cost of 25,000, with three chapels. A complete and thorough plan of drainage is being carried out, partly on the separate system. There is a fire brigade under the corporation, and at the entrance to the harbour there is a life-boat station. The police are those of the county. Several newspapers are published ; and there are branches of various banking establishments, some of them occupying large and handsome buildings. The extensive and interesting ruins of Furness Abbey, founded by Stephen in 1127, lie within the borough, over two miles from the heart of the town. They are beauti fully situated in a small wooded valley, with a hotel and railway station close by. On Piel island is the Pile of Fouldrey, or Piel castle, the ruin of a castle built in 1327 by the abbot of Furness.  BARROW,, an eminent mathematician and divine, was the son of Thomas Barrow, a linen draper in London, where he was born in 1630. He was at first placed for two or three years at the Charter-house school. There, however, his conduct gave but little hopes of his ever suc ceeding as a scholar, for he was inattentive and extremely fond of fighting. But after his removal from this establish ment, his disposition took a happier turn ; and having soon made considerable progress in learning, he was in 1643 entered at St Peter s College, and afterwards at Trinity College, Cambridge, where he applied himself with great diligence to the study of literature and science, especially of natural philosophy. He at first intended to adopt the medical profession, and made some progress in anatomy, botany, and chemistry, after which he studied chronology, geometry, and astronomy. He then travelled in France and Italy, and in a voyage from Leghorn to Smyrna gave proofs of great personal bravery ; for the ship having been attacked by an Algerine pirate, Barrow remained upon deck, and fought with the utmost intrepidity, until the pirate, unprepared for the stout resistance made by the ship, sheered off and left her to pursue her voyage. At Smyrna he met with a most kind reception from the English consul, Mr Bretton, upon whose death he after wards wrote a Latin elegy. From this place he proceeded to Constantinople, where he received similar civilities from Sir Thomas Bendish, the English ambassador, and Sir Jonathan Dawes, with whom he afterwards contracted an intimate friendship. While at Constantinople he read and studied the works of Chrysostom, once bishop of that see, whom he preferred to all the other Fathers. He resided in Turkey somewhat more than a year, after which he pro ceeded to Venice, and thence returned home through Germany and Holland in 1659. Immediately on his reach ing England he received ordination from Bishop Brownrig, and in 1660 he was appointed to the Greek professorship at Cambridge. When he entered upon this office he intended to have prelected upon the tragedies of Sophocles ; but he altered his intention, and made choice of Aris totle s rhetoric. His lectures on this subject having been lent to a friend who never returned them, are irre coverably lost. In July 1662 he was elected professor of geometry in Gresham College, on the recommendation of Dr Wilkins, master of Trinity College, and afterwards bishop of Chester; and in May 1663 he was chosen a fellow of the Royal Society, at the first election made by the council after obtaining their charter. The same year the executors of Mr Lucas, who, according to the terms of his will, had founded a mathematical chair at Cam bridge, fixed upon Barrow as the first professor; and although his two professorships were not inconsistent with each other, he chose to resign that of Gresham College, which he did on the 20th May 1664. In 1669 he resigned his mathematical chair to his illustrious pupil Isaac New ton, having now determined to renounce the study of mathematics for that of divinty. Upon quitting his pro fessorship Barrow was only a fellow of Trinity College ; but his uncle gave him a small sinecure in Wales, and Dr Seth Ward, bishop of Salisbury, conferred upon him a prebend in that church. In the year 1670 he was created doctor in divinity by mandate ; and, upon the promotion of Dr Pearson, master of Trinity College, to tbe see of Chester, he was appointed to succeed him by the king s patent, bearing date the 13th February 1 672. In 1675 Dr Barrow was chosen vice-chancellor of the university. He died on the 4th of May 1677, in the 47th year of his age, and was interred in Westminster Abbey, where a monument, sur mounted by his bust, was soon after erected by the contributions of his friends. By his English contemporaries Barrow was considered a mathematician second only to Newton. Continental writers do not place him so high, and their judgment is probably the more correct one. He was undoubtedly a clear-sighted and able mathematician, who handled admirably the severe geometrical method, and who in his Method of Tangents approximated to the course of reasoning by which Newton was afterwards led to the doctrine of Ultimate Ratios ; but his substantial contribu tions to the science are of no great importance, and his lectures upon elementary principles do not throw much light on the difficulties surrounding the border-land between mathematics and philosophy. His Sermons have long enjoyed a high reputation ; they are weighty pieces of reasoning, elaborate in construction and ponderous in style.

1em  BARROW,, Bart., was born near Ulverston, in Lancashire, June 19, 1764. His early opportunities of instruction were limited; but by self -education he matured those powers which eventually were turned to so good an account. He displayed at an early age a decided inclina tion for mathematical pursuits. He passed some years of his youth as superintending clerk of an iron foundry at Liverpool, and he afterwards taught mathematics at an academy in Greenwich. While in the latter situation he was fortunate in obtaining, through the interest of Sir George Staunton, a place in the first British embassy to China. He was thus enabled to put his foot on the first step of the lad der of ambition ; but each step in his subsequent career may be fairly said to have been achieved by himself. The account of the embassy published by Sir George Staunton records many of Barrow s valuable contributions to litera ture and science connected with China. This work, together with his own subsequently published volume of 