Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 4.djvu/633

Rh  1em  BURNTISLAND, a parliamentary burgh and seaport of Scotland, in the county of Fife. It possesses a good pier, ft dry dock, and a commodious harbour. Distilling and the herring-fishery are carried on, and a good deal of coal and pig-iron is exported. It is the northern station of the ferry across the Firth of Forth in connection with the North British Railway from Granton, from which it is about five miles distant. The burgh unites with Kirk- caldy, Kinghorn, and Dysart in sending one member to Parliament. The population in 1871 was 3422.  BURSLEM, a town of England, in the county of Stafford shire, 18 miles south of Macclesfield, and 150 miles from London. It stands on a gentle eminence near the Trent and Mersey canal, and is the principal town of the pottsries district. It contains a town-hall, erected in 1865, a market-house, a news-room, and a mechanics institute ; but its most interesting building is the Wedg wood Institute, founded in 1863 in honour of the great manufacturer, who was born in the town in 1730. It com prises a school of art, a free library, and a museum ; and the exterior is richly and peculiarly ornamented, to show the progress of fictile art. The tower of the parish church is of some antiquity, though the building itself is of modern date. The town is mentioned in Domesday Book as Bar- cardeslim, and it appears at an early period as a seat of the pottery trade. Its prosperity was greatly increased in the end of the 18th century by the opening of the Grand Trunk canal. Population of township in 1872, 20,971.  BURTON, (1576-1640), author of the Anatomy of Melancholy, was born at Lindley, Leicestershire, on the c&amp;gt;th February 1576. He attended the grammar schools of Nuneaton and Sutton Coldfields, and at the age of seventeen entered Brasenose College, Oxford. In 1599 he was elected student of Christ Church, and in 1614 took the degree of B.D. In 1616 he was presented to the vicarage of St Thomas, and in 1636 to the rectory of Segrave. He died on the 25th January 1639-40. The Anatomy of Melancholy, ivhat it is, ivith all the kinds, causes, symptoms, prognostics, and several cures of it : In three partitions, tvith their several sections, members, and sub-sections, philosophically, medicinally, historically opened and cut up : By Democritus Junior, ivith a satirical preface conducing to the following discourse, was pub lished in 1621. Our information with regard to the strange author of this strange book is very scanty. Anthony Wood s account of him has often been quoted ; it repre sents what must have been his contemporaries opinion of him. A very curious anecdote is told of the method he adopted to dissipate the morbid melancholy which weighed upon him. He used to go to the bridge foot and hear the ribaldry of the bargemen, which rarely failed to throw him into a violent fit of laughter. His book is truly a marvellous production, and proves at least one thing, that the author was a thorough classical scholar. Indeed the work is a cento of quotations, and, like the Intellectual System of Cudworth, has served as a storehouse of learned material. Sterne is not the only one who has borrowed from the author of the Anatomy. The book itself is essentially unsystematic, but has a fine flavour of thorough going ill-humour about it. This world was a dreary farce, and life was something to be laughed at. With a certain class of readers it has always been a favourite. Charles Lamb is a typical instance of a reader in Burton. The introductory poem has some curious analogies of style and thought to the Allegro and Penseroso of Milton.  BURTON-ON-TRENT, an English town, in the north east part of the hundred of Offlow, and the eastern division of the county of Stafford. It is situated on the west bank of the River Trent, and is distant from Stafford 25 miles, from Derbyll miles, and about 126 miles from London. The parish comprises over 9625 acres, and is divided into the townships of Burton-on-Trent, Burton Extra, Branston, Horninglow. and Stretton on the Staffordshire side of the river, and Stapenhill and Winshill on the Derbyshire side. The history of the town may be said to begin with the erection of a church or monastery by the river side towards the close of the 9th century. But from that time we learn little concerning the place or its progress for about a hundred years. In 1002, the Burton abbey was founded by Wulfric, earl of Mercia, and substantially endowed. In 1540 it was surrendered to Henry VIII., who, in 1549, made a grant of it with all its lands and properties to his secretary Sir William Paget, the ancestor of the present lord of the manor, the marquis of Anglesey. In the time preceding the foundation of the abbey, the importance of the town was probably equal to that of the majority of Saxon boroughs, but it seems subsequently to have made but little progress, and even to the close of the 16th century to have had its character and condition mainly determined by the fact of its being the centre of an important ecclesiastical district. Notwithstanding the situation of the town being such as to have made it always the key to one of the great high roads between the Midland Counties, it does not seem to have been at any time fortified. It was the scene, however, of many frays. Especially notable is the battle which was fought at the Old Bridge on the 18th of March 1321, between the forces of Edward II. and Thomas earl of Lancaster, in which the latter was defeated. During the civil war of the 17th century, Burton was repeatedly taken and re-taken. The consequences to the town were serious, entailing permanent injury to its interests in trade. Previous to the outbreak of the war the woollen trade had been the staple of the town, although it had also long been noted for its alabaster works, but the frequent plunderings of that unquiet time all but ruined these industries. In the year 1255 the greater part of the town was destroyed by fire, and in 1514 it was nearly swept away by floods. The latter form of disaster has frequently recurred. In 1771, in 1792, in 1795, in 1852, and twice in 1875 the town was visited by heavy floods, which inundated the greater part of it, and inflicted considerable damage. In 1875 the depth of water in several streets was from 4 to 5 feet, and the current strong and dangerous. In the year 1698 an Act of Parliament was obtained for making the Trent navigable as far as Burton, and for many years the &quot; Burton Boat Company,&quot; as it was called, did good service as carrying-agents for the trade of the town. The opening of the Midland Railway in August 1839 was followed by results more marked even than such as have commonly attended the introduction of railways. The progress of the town since that date has been constant and 