BURKE, EDMUND, orator and philosophic writer, born at Dublin, and educated at Dublin University; entered Parliament in 1765; distinguished himself by his eloquence on the Liberal side, in particular by his speeches on the American war, Catholic emancipation, and economical reform; his greatest oratorical efforts were his orations in support of the impeachment of Warren Hastings; he was a resolute enemy of the French Revolution, and eloquently denounced it in his “Reflections,” a weighty appeal; wrote in early life two small but notable treatises, “A Vindication of Natural Society,” and another on our ideas of the “Sublime and Beautiful,” which brought him into contact with the philosophic intellects of the time, and sometime after planned the “Annual Register,” to which he was to the last chief contributor.  “He was,” says Professor Saintsbury, “a rhetorician (i. e. an expert in applying the art of prose literature to the purpose of suasion), and probably the greatest that modern times has ever produced” (1730-1797).

BURKE, SIR JOHN BERNARD, genealogist, born in London, of Irish descent, author of the “Peerage and Baronetage of the United Kingdom”; produced, besides editing successive editions of it, a number of works on aristocratic genealogies (1815-1892).

BURKE, ROBERT O’HARA, Australian explorer, born in Galway; conducted an expedition across Australia, but on the way back both he and his companion Wells perished, after terrible sufferings from privation and drought (1820-1861).

BURKE, WILLIAM, a notorious murderer, native of Ireland; executed in 1828 for wholesale murders of people in Edinburgh by suffocation, after intoxicating them with drink, whose bodies he sold for dissection to an Edinburgh anatomist of the name of Knox, whom the citizens mobbed; he had an accomplice as bad as himself, who, becoming informer, got off.

BURKITT, WILLIAM, Biblical expositor, born in Suffolk; author of “Expository Notes on the New Testament,” once held in high esteem (1650-1703).

BURLEIGH, WILLIAM CECIL, LORD, a great statesman, born in Lincolnshire; bred to the legal profession, and patronised and promoted by the Protector Somerset; managed to escape the Marian persecution; Queen Elizabeth recognised his statesman-like qualities, and appointed him chief-secretary of state, an office which, to the glory of the queen and the good of the country, he held for forty years, till his death.  His administration was conducted in the interest of the commonweal without respect of persons, and nearly all his subordinates were men of honour as well as himself (1520-1598).

BURLINGAME, ANSON, American diplomatist; sent ambassador to China, and returned as Chinese envoy to the American and European courts; concluded treaties between them and China (1820-1870).