many, and, in 1688, came to Utrecht, where he received an invitation from the prince and princess of Orange (to whom their party in England had recommended him) to come to the Hague. Here he was at once made acquainted with the counsels of the prince, and advised the fitting out of a fleet in Holland to support his designs. This, and the Account of his Travels, which, with some papers, in single sheets, reflecting on the proceedings of England, were industriously dispersed throughout the country, alarmed king James, and occasioned him twice to insist, by his ambassador, on his being dismissed. This, after much importunity, was done, though he continued to be trusted and employed as before. To put an end to his frequent conferences with the Dutch ministers, a prosecution for high treason was set on foot against him both in England and Scotland. But Burnet receiving the news before it arrived at the States, he avoided the storm, by petitioning for, and obtaining, a bill of naturalisation, in order to an intended marriage with Mary Scot, a Dutch lady of considerable fortune. After his marriage, being legally under the protection of Holland, when he found king James plainly subverting the constitution, he omitted no method to promote the design the prince of Orange had formed of delivering Great Britain, and came over with him in quality of chaplain. He was soon advanced to the see of Salisbury, and declared for moderate measures with regard to the clergy, who scrupled to take the oaths, as well as for the toleration of nonconformists. His Pastoral Letter, concerning the oaths of allegiance and supremacy to king William and queen Mary, 1689, happening to touch upon the right of conquest, gave such offence to both houses of parliament, that it was ordered to be burnt by the hands of the common executioner. In 1698 he lost his wife by the small-pox; and, as he was almost immediately after appointed preceptor to the duke of Gloucester, of whose education he took great care, this employment, and the tender age of his children, induced him the same year to supply her loss by a marriage with Mrs. Berkley, eldest daughter of Sir Richard Blake, knight. In 1699 he published his Exposition of the thirtynine articles; which occasioned a representation against him in the lower house of convocation, 1701; but he was vindicated in the upper house. His speech in the house of lords in 1704, against the bill to prevent occasional conformity, was severely attacked. He died in 1715, and was interred in the church of St. James, Clerkenwell, where he has a monument. He formed a scheme for augmenting the poor livings; which he pressed forward with such success, that it ended in an act of parliament passed in the second year of queen Anne, 'for the augmentation of the livings of the poor clergy.'

BURNET (Thomas), a learned writer in the end of the seventeenth century, was born at Croft, in Yorkshire, in 1635, and educated at Cambridge under the tuition of Mr. Tillotson, afterwards archbishop of Canterbury. In the beginning of 1685 he was made master of the Charter-House, after which he entered into holy orders. The year following he distinguished himself greatly,

by refusing to admit Andrew Popham, a Roman Catholic, as a pensioner of the Charter-House, though the man came with a letter from king James himself to the governors. In 1680 he published his Telluris Theoria Sacra, so universally admired for the purity of the style and beauty of the sentiments, that king Charles gave encouragement to a translation of it into English; and though, in point of philosophy, it is completely exploded, the book will ever continue to charm the reader by the eloquence of its style, and the grandeur of its imagery. It was answered by Warren, Keill, and Whiston; to all of whom Dr. Burnet replied. After the Revolu tion he was made clerk of the closet to the king, of which place he was deprived in 1692, for publishing some dangerous positions in his Archæologia Philosophicæ. He died in 1715. Since his death have been published, his books, De Statu Mortuorum et Resurgentium, and De Fide et Officiis Christianorum.

BURNETT (James), lord Monboddo, a learned lawyer and polite writer, was born at the family-seat of Monboddo, in North Britain, in 1714. He was educated at Laurencekirk, Aberdeen, and Groningen, where he studied the civil law. In 1738, on his return to Scotland, he was admitted an advocate, and obtained considerable practice. On the death of his relation, lord Milton, in 1767, he was promoted, by the title of lord Monboddo, to the bench; and died at Edinburgh of a paralytic stroke, in 1799. His lordship was deeply read in Greek literature, his love of which induced him to despise more modern learning. He indulged in some curious speculations; seriously advocating the existence of satyrs and mermaids, together with a supposed affinity between the human and the monkey tribes. His Origin and Progress of Language appeared in 1773; and the First Part of his Ancient Metaphysics in 1778. This last extended to six volumes.

BURNEY (Charles, Mus. D.), was a native of Shrewsbury, and born in 1726. Having received the rudiments of education, first at the grammar-school of his native town, and at Chester, he returned home in 1741, and continued the study of music, for which he had early shown a strong taste. He was finally placed under Dr. Arne for three years, and in 1749 was elected organist to a church in Fenchurch-street. His stay in London, however, was short; after composing, in the winter of 1749, Robin Hood, Alfred, and Queen Mab, for Drury-lane, he retired to Lynn Regis, where he commenced his great undertaking, the General History of Music, the first volume of which appeared in 1776, and the remaining three at intervals, till the whole was completed, in 1789. He returned, after nine years' absence, to the metropolis, and produced at Drury-lane an English version of the Devin du Village of Rousseau. In 1769 he took an honorary degree of doctor of music at Oxford, where his probationary exercise was much admired, and frequently performed. The year following he went abroad, and on his return published his Musical Tour through France and Italy. In 1772 he again left England and made a tour through Germany and the Netherlands, an

account of which appeared in two volumes, octavo. On his second return he became a fellow of the Royal Society, and drew up for the Philosophical Transactions, An Account of Little Crotch the Infant Musician, the present Oxford musical professor. His other works are-An Account of the Commemoration of Handel in 1785, with a Memoir of that celebrated man; a Life of Metastasio, in 3 vols. 8vo. 1796; an Essay on the History of Comets; a Plan of a Public Music School; and The Cunning Man; besides numerous sonatas, duets, and concertos. Dr. Burney was for some time an inhabitant of a house in St. Martin's-street, near Leicestersquare, which was once the habitation of Sir Isaac Newton; but the last twenty-five years of his life were spent in his apartments in Chelsea College, to which he was organist. Several of his children, of whom he had eight, by two marriages, have also distinguished themselves in the literary world, especially his second son, and madame d'Arblay, authoress of Evelina, &c. His eldest son James was a companion of captain Cook round the world. Dr. Burney died in 1814, aged eighty-eight.

BURNEY (Charles, D. D.), was the second son of the preceding, and born at Lynn, in Norfolk, in 1757. He was educated at the Charter-house, and Caius College, Cambridge, whence he removed to King's College, Aberdeen, where he took his master's degree, in 1781. Soon after we find him an assistant in an academy at Highgate; and then, at Chiswick, in that of Dr. Rose. While here he wrote some criticisms in the Monthly Review, conducted in this neighbourhood, particularly on the Monostrophies of Mr. Huntingford. About this time he married the daughter of Dr. Rose, and opened a school at Hammersmith, in 1786; from whence, in 1793, he removed to Greenwich. In 1792 he had obtained the degree of doctor of laws from Aberdeen and Glasgow. Late in life he took orders, on which occasion he was presented to the living of St. Paul, Deptford, the rectory of Cliffe, a prebend in Lincoln cathedral, the honorary degree of D. D. and made chaplain in ordinary to the king. He died, December the 28th, 1817. His library was purchased by parliament, and presented to the British Museum. His works are-1. Appendix ad Lexicon Græco-Latinum a Joan. Scapulam, 1789. 2. Remarks on the Greek Verses of Milton, 1791. 3. Richardi Bentleii et Doctorum Virorum Epistolæ, 4to. 1807. 4. Tentamen de Metris ab Eschylo in Opericis Cantibus Adhibitis, 8vo. 1809. 5. Bishop Pearson's Exposition of the Creed, abridged, 12mo. 6. Philemonis Lexicon Græcè, 4to. 7. A Sermon at the Anniversary of the Sons of the Clergy at St. Paul's, 4to. 1813.

BURNING, considered philosophically, is the action of fire on some pabulum or fuel, by which the minute parts thereof are put into a violent motion, and some of them, assuming the nature of fire themselves, fly off in orbem, while the rest are dissipated in form of vapor, or reduced to ashes.

BURNING, in antiquity, was a method of disposing of the dead, much practised by the ancient Greeks and Romans, and still retained by several

nations in the East and West Indies. The antiquity of this custom rises as high as the Theban war, where we are told of the solemnity accoinpanying this ceremony at the pyre of Menæceus and Archemorus, who were contemporary with Jair, the eighth judge of Israel. Homer abounds with descriptions of such funeral obsequies. In the inland regions of Asia, the practice was of very ancient date, and the continuance long: for we are told, that, in the reign of Julian, the king of Chionia burnt his son's body, and deposited the ashes in a silver urn. Coeval almost with the first instances of this kind in the East, was the practice in the western parts of the world. The Herulians, the Getes, and the Thracians, had all along observed it; and its antiquity was as great with the Celta, Sarmatians, and other neighbouring nations. The origin of this custom seems to have been friendship to the deceased: their ashes were preserved, as we preserve a lock of hair, a ring, or a seal, which had belonged to a deceased friend. Kings were burnt in cloth made of the asbestos, that their ashes might be preserved pure from any mixture with the fuel and other matters thrown on the funeral pile. The same method is still observed with the princes of Tartary. Among the Greeks, the body was placed on the top of a pile, on which were thrown divers animals, and even slaves and captives, besides unguents and perfumes. In Homer's account of the funeral of Patroclus we find a number of sheep and oxen thrown in; then horses followed by two dogs, and lastly by twelve Trojan prisoners. The same customs are mentioned by Virgil in the funeral of his Trojans; where, besides oxen, swine, and all manner of cattle, we find eight youths condemned to the flames. The body was covered with the fat of the beasts, that it might consume the sooner; it being reckoned great felicity to be quickly reduced to ashes. We are assured by Plutarch and Macrobius, that with every ten men it was customary to put in one woman. Soldiers usually had their arms burnt with them. The garments worn by the living were also thrown on the pile, with other ornaments and presents; a piece of extravagance which the Athenians carried to so great a height, that some of the law-givers restrained them, by severe penalties, from defrauding the living by their liberality to the dead. In some cases, burning was expressly forbidden among the Romans, and even looked upon as the highest impiety. Thus infants, who died before the breeding of teeth, were intombed unburnt in the ground, in a particular place set apart for this purpose, called suggrundarium. The same was practised with regard to those struck dead by lightning. Some say that burning was denied to suicides. The manner of burning among the Romans was not unlike that of the Greeks; the corpse, being taken without the city, was carried directly to the place appointed; which, if it joined to the sepulchre, was called bustum; if separate from it, ustrina; and there laid on the rogus or pyra, a pile of wood prepared on which to burn it, built in shape of an altar, but of different height according to the quality of the deceased. Round the pile they set cypress trees, probably to hinder the noisome smell of the corpse. The body was

not placed on the bare pile, but on the couch or bed whereon it lay. This done, the next of blood performed the ceremony of lighting the pile; which they did with a torch, turning their faces all the while the other way, as if it were done with reluctance. During the ceremony, decursions and games were celebrated; after which came the ossilegium, or gathering of the bones and ashes; also washing and anointing them, and repositing them in urns.

BURNING, in medicine and surgery, denotes the application of an actual cautery See CAU

TERY.

BURNING, OF BRENNING, in our old writings, denotes an infectious disease, got in the stews by conversing with lewd women, and supposed to be the same with what we now call the venereal disease.

BURNING ALIVE, among the Romans, was a punishment inflicted on deserters, betrayers of the public councils, incendiaries, and even Christians: It was called crematio. The Jews had two ways of burning; the one called burning of the body, performed with wood and faggots; the other burning of the soul, combustio animæ, performed by pouring scalding hot lead down their throats. Incest in the ascending and descending degrees was thus punished by them. But philanthropy is shocked to reflect, for what trifling crimes this horrid punishment has been inflicted among other nations. Even in our own country, till within these few years, burning alive was the punishment of women, convicted of coining or counterfeiting shillings! Thus was the weaker sex punished in the most barbarous manner, for a trifling felony, which could hardly wrong any individual above the value of a few pence.

BURNING INTERNAL. See COMBUSTION. BURNING GLASSES are commonly made convex and spherical. The small space upon which the collected rays fall, is called the focus; where wood, or any other combustible matter being put, will be set on fire. The term burning glass is also applied to those concave mirrors, whether composed of glass quick-silvered, or of metalline matters, which burn by reflection, condensing the sun's rays into a focus similar to the former. The use of burning glasses appears to have been very ancient. Diodorus Siculus, Lucian, Dion, Zonaras, Galen, Anthemius, Eustathius, Tzetzes, and others, attest, that by means of them Archimedes set fire to the Roman fleet at the siege of Syracuse. Tzetzes is so particular in his account of this matter, that his description suggested to Kircher the method by which it was probably accomplished. According to that author, Archimedes set fire to Marcellus's navy, by means of a burning glass composed of small square mirrors, moving every way upon hinges; which, when placed in the sun's rays, directed them upon the Roman fleet, so as to reduce it to ashes at the distance of a bow-shot. That the ancients were also acquainted with the use of catoptric or refracting burning glasses, appears from a passage in Aristophanes's comedy of the Clouds, which clearly treats of their effects. The author introduces Socrates as examining Strepsiades about the method he had discovered of getting clear of his debts. He replies, that he thought of mak

ing use of a burning glass which he had hitherto used in kindling his fire; for', says he, should, they bring a writ against me, I shall immediately place my glass in the sun at some little distance from it, and set it on fire.' Pliny and Lactantius have also spoken of glasses that burn by refrac tion. The former calls them balls or globes of glass or crystal, which exposed to the sun, transmit a heat sufficient to set fire to cloth, or corrode the dead flesh of those patients who stand in need of caustics; and the latter, after Clemens Alex andrinus, takes notice that fire may be kindled by interposing glasses filled with water betweer the sun and the object, so as to transmit the rays to it. It seems difficult to conceive how they should know such glasses would burn without knowing they would magnify, which it is granted they did not, till towards the close of the thirteenth century. M. de la Hire accounts for this, by observing, that their burning glasses being spheres, either solid or full of water, their foci would be one-fourth of their diameter distant from them. If then their diameter were supposed half a foot, which is the most we can allow, an object must be only at an inch and a half distance to perceive it magnified; those at greater distances do not appear greater, but only more confused through the glass than out of it. Among the ancients, the burning mirrors of Archimedes and Proclus are famous. By the latter the navy of Vitellius besieging Byzantium, according to Zonaras, was burnt to ashes. Among the moderns. the most remarkable burning mirrors are those of Settala, Vilette, Tschirnhausen, Buffon, Trudaine, and Parker. Settala, canon of Padua, made a parabolic mirror, which, according to Schottus, burnt pieces of wood at the distance of fifteen or sixteen paces. The following experiments are noted in the Acta Eruditorum. 1. Green wood takes fire instantaneously, so as a strong wind cannot extinguish it. 2. Water boils immediately; and eggs in it are presently edible. 3. A mixture of tin and lead, three inches thick, drops presently; and iron and steel plate becomes redhot presently, and a little after burns into holes. 4. Things not capable of melting, as stones, bricks. &c. become soon red-hot, like iron. 5. Slate becomes first white, then a black glass. 6. Tiles are converted into a yellow glass: and shells into a blackish yellow one. 7. A pumice stone, emitted from a volcano, melts into white glass. 8. A piece of crucible also vitrifies in eight minutes. 9. Bones are soon turned into an opaque glass, and earth into a black one. The breadth of this mirror is near three Leipsic ells, its focus two ells from it; it is made of copper, and its substance is not above double the thickness of the back of a knife. Villette, a French artist of Lyons, made a large mirror, which was bought by Tavernier, and presented to the king of Persia; a second, bought by the king of Denmark; a third, presented by the French king to the Royal Academy; a fourth, has been in England, where it was publicly exposed. The effects hereof, as found by Dr. Harris, and Dr. Desaguliers, are, that a silver sixpence is melted in seven seconds and a half, a halfpenny in sixteen, and runs with a hole in thirty-four. Tin melts in three seconds, cast iron in sixteen, slate in three; a fossil shell