Part 94 (1/2)
BRYDGES, SIR SAMUEL EGERTON, English antiquary, born at Wootton House, in Kent; called to the bar, but devoted to literature; was M.P.
for Maidstone for six years; lived afterwards and died at Geneva; wrote novels and poems, and edited old English writings of interest (1762-1837).
BUBASTIS, an Egyptian G.o.ddess, the Egyptian Diana, the wife of Ptah; and a city in Lower Egypt, on the eastern branch of the Nile.
BUCCANEERS, an a.s.sociation, chiefly English and French, of piratical adventurers in the 16th and 17th centuries, with their head-quarters in the Caribbean Sea, organised to plunder the s.h.i.+ps of the Spaniards in resentment of the exclusive right they claimed to the wealth of the S.
American continent, which they were carrying home across the sea.
BUCCLEUCH, a glen 18 m. SW. of Selkirk, with a stronghold of the Scott family, giving the head the t.i.tle of earl or duke.
BUCEN'TAUR, the state galley, worked by oars and manned by 168 rowers, in which the Doge of Venice used to sail on the occasion of the annual ceremony of wedding anew the Adriatic Sea by sinking a ring in it.
BUCEPH'ALUS (i. e. ox-head), the horse which Alexander the Great, while yet a youth, broke in when no one else could, and on which he rode through all his campaigns; it died in India from a wound. The town, Bucephala, on the Hydaspes, was built near its grave.
BUCER MARTIN, a German Reformer, born at Stra.s.sburg; originally a Dominican, adopted the Reformed faith, ministered as pastor and professor in his native place, differed in certain matters from both Luther and Zwingli, while he tried to reconcile them; invited by Cranmer to England, he accepted the invitation, and became professor of Divinity at Cambridge, where he died, but his bones were exhumed and burned a few years later (1491-1551).
BUCH, LEOPOLD VON, a German geologist, a pupil of Werner and fellow-student of Alexander von Humboldt, who esteemed him highly; adopted the volcanic theory of the earth; wrote no end of scientific memoirs (1774-1853).
BUCHAN, a district in the NE. of Aberdeens.h.i.+re, between the rivers Deveron and Ythan; abounds in magnificent rock scenery. The Comyns were earls of it till they forfeited the t.i.tle in 1309.
BUCHANAN, CLAUDIUS, born at Cambuslang, near Glasgow, chaplain in Barrackpur under the East India Company, vice-provost of the College at Fort William, Calcutta; one of the first to awaken an interest in India as a missionary field; wrote ”Christian Researches in Asia” (1756-1815).
BUCHANAN, GEORGE, a most distinguished scholar and humanist, born at Killearn, Stirlings.h.i.+re; educated at St. Andrews and Paris; professor for three years in the College at St. Barbe; returned to Scotland, became tutor to James V.'s illegitimate sons; imprisoned by Cardinal Beaton for satires against the monks, escaped to France; driven from one place to another, imprisoned in a monastery in Portugal at the instance of the Inquisition, where he commenced his celebrated Latin version of the Psalms; came back to Scotland, was appointed in 1562 tutor to Queen Mary, in 1566 princ.i.p.al of St. Leonard's College, in St. Andrews, in 1567 moderator of the General a.s.sembly in 1570 tutor to James VI., and had several offices of State conferred on him; wrote a ”History of Scotland,”
and his book ”De Jure Regni,” against the tyranny of peoples by kings; died in Edinburgh without enough to bury him; was buried at the public expense in Greyfriars' churchyard; when dying, it is said he asked his housekeeper to examine his money-box and see if there was enough to bury him, and when he found there was not, he ordered her to distribute what there was among his poor neighbours and left it to the city to bury him or not as they saw good (1506-1582).
BUCHANAN, JAMES, statesman of the United States, was amba.s.sador in London in 1853, made President in 1856, the fifteenth in order, at the time when the troubles between the North and South came to a head, favoured the South, retired after his Presidents.h.i.+p into private life (1791-1868).
BUCHANAN, ROBERT, a writer in prose and verse, born in Warwicks.h.i.+re, educated at Glasgow University; his first work, ”Undertones,” a volume of verse published by him in 1863, and he has since written a goodly number of poems, some of them of very high merit, the last ”The Wandering Jew,”
which attacks the Christian religion; besides novels, has written magazine articles, and one in particular, which involved him in some trouble; _b_.1841.
BUCHANITES, a fanatical sect who appeared in the W. of Scotland in 1783, named after a Mrs. Buchan, who claimed to be the woman mentioned in Rev. xii.
BUCHAREST (220), capital of Roumania, picturesquely situated on the Dambovitza, a tributary of the Danube, in a fertile plain, 180 m. from the Black Sea; is a meanly built but well-fortified town, with the reputation of the most dissolute capital in Europe; there is a Catholic cathedral and a university; it is the emporium of trade between the Balkan and Austria; textiles, grain, hides, metal, and coal are the chief articles in its markets.
BUCHEZ, JOSEPH, a French historian, politician, and Socialist; joined the St. Simonian Society, became a Christian Socialist, and a collaborateur in an important historical work, the ”Parliamentary History of the French Revolution”; figured in political life after the Revolution of 1848, but retired to private life after the establishment of the Empire (1796-1865).