(Dutch), a vessel or boat of state, furnished with elegant apartments, canopies, and cushions; equipped with a band of rowers, and decorated with flags and streamers: they are generally used for processions on the water, by noblemen, officers of state, or magistrates of great cities. Of this sort, too, we may naturally suppose the famous barge or galley of Cleopatra, which, according to Shakespeare,

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Like a burnish'd throne Burnt on the water: the poop was beaten gold: Purple her sails; and so perfumed, that The winds were love-sick with them: the oars were silver, Which to the tune of flutes kept time, and made The water which they beat to follow faster, As amorous of their strokes

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At the helm A seeming mermaid fleer'd: the silken tackles Swell'd with the touches of those flower-soft hands That rarely form'd their office.

There are likewise other barges of a smaller kind, for the use of admirals and captains of ships of war. These are of a lighter frame, and may be easily hoisted into and out of the ships to which they occasionally belong.

**BARGE** is also the name of a flat-bottomed vessel of burden, for lading and discharging ships, and removing their cargoes from place to place in a harbour.

**BARGO-Coupler**, in architecture, a beam mortised into another, to strengthen the building.

**BARGO-Course**, with bricklayers, a term used for that part of the tiling which projects over without the principal rafters, in all sorts of buildings where there is either a gable or a kirkin-head.