Page:Men of the Time, eleventh edition.djvu/206

Rh great tithes of the living of Old St. Pancras, a special connection with that parish, the Baroness, in 1877, laid out the churchyard as a garden for the enjoyment of the surrounding poor, besides erecting a memorial sun-dial to its illustrious dead. In the same year, when accounts were reaching this country of the sufferings of the Turkish and Bulgarian peasantry flying from their homes before the Russian invasion, Lady Burdett-Coutts instituted the Turkish Compassionate Fund, a charitable organization by means of which the sum of nearly £30,000, contributed in money and stores, was entrusted to the British Ambassador for distribution, and saved thousands from starvation and death. This is but an imperfect enumeration of the Baroness's good works as a public benefactress. The amount of her private charities it is impossible to estimate. She is a liberal and discriminating patroness of artists in every department of art; being herself accomplished in many of them. Her hospitality is as comprehensive as her charity, not only to the great world, but to the poor. The beautiful gardens and grounds of her villa at Highgate are constantly thrown open to school children in thousands. In July, 1867, the Baroness received at Holly Lodge one of the largest dinner parties upon record. Upwards of 2,000 Belgian volunteers were invited to meet the Prince and Princess of Wales, and some five hundred royal and distinguished guests. All partook of her large and gracious hospitality with as much comfort and social enjoyment as if they had met at a small social gathering. In June, 1871, Miss Coutts was surprised by the prime minister with the offer from her Majesty of a peerage. The honour was accepted with the title that commences this memoir. Her ladyship was admitted to the freedom of the City of London, July 11, 1872, and to the freedom of the City of Edinburgh, Jan. 16, 1874. On Nov. 1, 1880, the Haberdashers' Company publicly conferred their freedom and livery on the Baroness Burdett-Coutts in recognition of her judicious and extensive benevolence and her munificent support of educational, charitable, and religious institutions, and efforts throughout the country. The Baroness was married on Feb. 12, 1881, to Mr. William Lehman Ashmead Bartlett, who obtained the royal licence to use the surname of Burdett-Coutts in addition to and before that of Bartlett.  , D.D., son of Mr. James Burdon, of Glasgow, was born in 1826, and educated at the Church Missionary College, Islington. He was a missionary in Shanghai from 1852 till 1874, when he was appointed Bishop of Victoria, Hong Kong, in succession to Dr. Alford. His episcopal jurisdiction extends over the Anglican congregations in South China and Japan.  , LL.D., of Glasgow, was born in 1808, and educated at the Dissenting College at Stepney, where he obtained a high standing in Hebrew and classical learning. After ministering to a Nonconformist congregation, he received orders from the Bishop of Manchester in 1850. He held the perpetual curacy of Clifton Reynes, Bucks, from 1854 to 1861, was for some years editer of the Clerical Journal and the Journal of Sacred Literature, and is known as the author of some translations from the Syriac language, including two volumes of the "Metrical Hymns and Homilies of St. Ephrem Syrus, with Philological Notes and Dissertations on the Syrian Metrical Church Literature," 1835, and a translation of the "Festal Letters of St. Athanasius," 1852, a work which, after being long lost in the original Greek, was recovered in an ancient Syriac version, and edited for the Oxford "Library of the 