GILBERT, bishop of Salisbury in the latter end of the 17th century, was born at Edinburgh, in 1643, of an ancient family in the shire of Aberdeen. His father being bred to the law, was, at the restoration of King Charles II, appointed one of the lords of session, with the title of Lord Crimond, in reward for his constant attachment to the royal party during the troubles of Great Britain. Our author, the youngest son of his father, was instructed by him in the Latin tongue: at ten years of age he was sent to continue his studies at Aberdeen, and was admitted M.A. before he was 14. His own inclination led him to the study of the civil and feudal law; and he used to say, that it was from this study he had received more just notions concerning the foundations of civil society and government, than those which some divines maintain. About the year after, he changed his mind, and began to apply to divinity, to the great satisfaction satisfaction of his father. He was admitted preacher before he was 18; and Sir Alexander Burnet, his cousin-german, offered him a benefice; but he refused to accept of it.

In 1663, about two years after the death of his father, he came into England; and after six months stay at Oxford and Cambridge, returned to Scotland; which he soon left again to make a tour for some months, in 1664, in Holland and France. At Amsterdam, by the help of a Jewish rabbi, he perfected himself in the Hebrew language; and likewise became acquainted with the leading men of the different persuasions tolerated in that country; as Calvinists, Arminians, Lutherans, Anabaptists, Brownists, Papists, and Unitarians; amongst each of which he used frequently to declare, he met with men of such unfeigned piety and virtue, that he became fixed in a strong principle of universal charity, and an invincible abhorrence of all severities on account of religious differences.

Upon his return from his travels, he was admitted minister of Saltoun; in which station he served five years in the most exemplary manner. He drew up a memorial, in which he took notice of the principal errors in the conduct of the Scots bishops, which he observed not to be conformable to the primitive institution; and sent a copy of it to several of them. This exposed him to their resentments: but, to show he was not actuated with a spirit of ambition, he led a retired course of life for two years; which so endangered his health, that he was obliged to abate his excessive application to study. In 1669, he published his "Modest and free conference between a conformist and non-conformist." He became acquainted with the dukes of Hamilton, who communicated to him all the papers belonging to her father and her uncle; upon which he drew up the "Memoirs of the dukes of Hamilton."

The duke of Lauderdale, hearing he was about this work, invited him to London, and introduced him to King Charles II. He returned to Scotland, and married the lady Margaret Kennedy, daughter of the earl of Cassilis; a lady of great piety and knowledge, highly esteemed by the Presbyterians, to whose sentiments she was strongly inclined. As there was some disparity in their ages, that it might remain past dispute that this match was wholly owing to inclination, and not to avarice or ambition, the day before their marriage our author delivered the lady a deed, whereby he renounced all pretensions to her fortune, which was very considerable, and must otherwise have fallen into his hands, the herself having no intention to secure it. The same year he published his "Vindication of the authority, constitution, and laws of the church and state of Scotland;" which at that juncture was looked upon as so great a service, that he was again offered a bishopric, and a promise of the next vacant archbishopric; but did not accept of it, because he could not approve of the measures of the court, the grand view of which he saw to be the advancement of Popery.

Mr Burnet's intimacy with the dukes of Hamilton and Lauderdale occasioned him to be frequently sent for by the king and the duke of York, who had conversations with him in private. But Lauderdale conceiving a resentment against him on account of the freedom with which he spoke to him, represented at last to the king, that Dr Burnet was engaged in an opposition to his measures. Upon his return to London, he perceived that these suggestions had entirely thrown him out of the king's favour, though the duke of York treated him with greater civility than ever, and dissuaded him from going to Scotland. Upon this, he resigned his professorship at Glasgow, and sailed at London. About this time the living at Cripplegate being vacant, the dean and chapter of St Paul's (in whose gift it was), hearing of his circumstances, and the hardships he had undergone, sent him an offer of the benefice; but as he had been informed of their first intention of conferring it on Dr Fowler, he generously declined it. In 1675, at the recommendation of Lord Hollis, whom he had known in France, ambassador at that court, he was, by Sir Herbotte Grimstone, master of the rolls, appointed preacher of the chapel there, notwithstanding the opposition of the court. He was soon after chosen a lecturer of St Clement's, and became one of the preachers that were most followed in town. In 1679, he published his History of the Reformation, for which he had the thanks of both houses of parliament. The first part of it was published in 1679, and the second in 1681. Next year he published an abridgement of these two parts.

Mr Burnet about this time happened to be sent for to a woman in sickness, who had been engaged in an amour with the earl of Rochester. The manner in which he treated her during her illness, gave that lord a great curiosity for being acquainted with him. Whereupon, for a whole winter, he spent one evening in a week with Dr Burnet, who discoursed with him upon all those topics upon which sceptics and men of loose morals attack the Christian religion. The happy effects of these conferences occasioned the publication of his account of the life and death of that earl. In 1682, when the administration was changed in favour of the duke of York, being much resorted to by persons of all ranks and parties, in order to avoid returning visits, he built a laboratory, and went for above a year through a course of chemical experiments. Not long after, he refused a living of 300l. a-year offered him by the earl of Essex, on the terms of his not residing there, but in London. When the inquiry concerning the popish plot was on foot, he was frequently sent for and consulted by King Charles with relation to the state of the nation. His majesty offered him the bishopric of Chichester, then vacant, if he would engage in his interests; but he refused to accept it on these terms. He preached at the Rolls till 1684, when he was dismissed by order of the court. About this time he published several pieces.

On King James's accession to the throne, having obtained leave to go out of the kingdom, he first went to Paris, and lived in great retirement, till contracting an acquaintance with Brigadier Stouppé, a Protestant gentleman in the French service, he made a tour with him into Italy. He met with an agreeable reception at Rome. Pope Innocent XI. hearing of our author's arrival, sent the captain of the Swiss guards to acquaint him he would give him a private audience in bed, to avoid the ceremony of killing his holiness's flipper. But Dr Burnet excused himself as well as he could. Some disputes which our author had here concerning religion, religion, beginning to be taken notice of, made it proper for him to quit the city, which, upon an intimation given him by Prince Borghefe, he accordingly did.

He pursued his travels through Switzerland and Germany. In 1688, he came to Utrecht, with an intention to settle in some of the seven provinces. There 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, which he accepted. He was soon made acquainted with the secret of their councils, and advised the fitting out of a fleet in Holland sufficient to support their designs and encourage their friends. This, and the Account of his Travels, in which he endeavoured to blend Popery and tyranny together, and represent them as inseparable, with some papers reflecting on the proceedings of England, that came out in single sheets, and were dispersed in several parts of England, most of which Mr Burnet owned himself the author of, alarmed King James; and were the occasion of his writing twice against him to the princes of Orange, and insulting, by his ambassador, on his being forbid the court; which, after much importunity was done, though he continued to be trusted and employed as before, the Dutch minister consulted him daily. To put an end to these frequent conferences with the ministers, a prosecution for high treason was set on foot against him both in England and Scotland. But Burnet receiving the news thereof before it arrived at the States, he avoided the storm, by petitioning for, and obtaining without any difficulty, a bill of naturalization, in order to his intended marriage with Mary Scott, a Dutch lady of considerable fortune, who, with the advantage of birth, had some of a fine person and understanding.

After his marriage with this lady, being legally under the protection of Holland, when Mr Burnet found King James plainly subverting the constitution, he omitted no method to support and 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. He declared for moderate measures with regard to the clergy who scrupled to take the oaths, and many were displeased with him for declaring 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 smallpox; and, as he was almost immediately after appointed preceptor to the duke of Gloucester, in 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 Berkeley, eldest daughter of Sir Richard Blake, knight. In 1699 he published his Exposition of the 39 articles; which occasioned a representation against him in the lower house of convocation in the year 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 erected to him. 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 polite and learned writer in the end of the 17th century, was born in Scotland, but educated in Cambridge under the tuition of Mr John Tillotson, afterwards archbishop of Canterbury. In the beginning of 1685, he was made master of Sutton's hospital in London, after which he entered into holy orders. During the reign of King James, he made a noble stand in his post as master of the Charter-house against the encroachments of that monarch, who would have imposed one Andrew Popham, a Papist, as a pensioner upon the foundation of that house. 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. This theory was, however, attacked by several writers. In 1692 he published his Archaeologia philosophica, dedicated to King William, to whom he was clerk of the closet. He died in 1715. Since his death hath been published, his book De statu mortuorum et reurgentium, and his treatise De fide et officiis Christianorum.

Honourable James, Lord Monboddo, a senator of the college of justice in Scotland, was born about the year 1714. He was the son of Mr Burnet of Monboddo in Kincardineshire. After passing through the usual course of school education, he prosecuted his studies at the universities of Aberdeen, Edinburgh, and Leyden, with distinguished reputation. He was admitted an advocate in 1737, and on the 12th of February 1767, he was raised to the bench by the title of Lord Monboddo, in the room of Lord Milton, appointed a judge the 4th of June 1742, and who had succeeded Sir John Lauder of Fountainhall, admitted Nov. 1689; being the third on the bench in succession since the revolution.

He married Miss Farquharson, a very amiable woman, by whom he had a son and two daughters.

His private life was spent in the practice of all the social virtues, and in the enjoyment of much domestic felicity. Although rigidly temperate in his habits of life, he, however, delighted much in the convivial society of his friends, and among these he could number almost all the most eminent of those who were distinguished in Scotland for virtue, literature, or genuine elegance of conversation and manners. One of those who esteemed him the most was the late Lord Gardenstone, a man who possessed no mean portion of the same overflowing benignity of disposition, the same unimpeachable integrity as a judge, the same partial fondness for literature and the fine arts. His son, a very promising boy, in whose education he took great delight, was, indeed, snatched away from his affections by a premature death. But, when it was too late for sorrow and anxiety to avail, the afflicted father stifled the emotions of nature in his breast, and wound up the energies of his soul to the firmest tone of stoical fortitude. He was, in like manner, bereaved of his excellent lady, the object of his dearest tenderness; and he endured the loss with a similar firmness, fitted to do honour... honour either to philosophy or to religion. In addition to his office as a judge in the court of session, an offer was made to him of a seat in the court of justiciary. But, though the emoluments of this would have made a convenient addition to his income, he refused to accept it; lest its burdens should too much detach him from the pursuit of his favourite studies. To these studies he continued through the whole of a long life to be greatly devoted. His admiration of the manners, literature, and philosophy of the ancients, was unbounded. Thus strongly prepossessed, it is not to be wondered at, that the comparison which he made between the ancients and moderns, was little favourable to the latter. For among the former he supposed that he saw all that was elegant, manly, and virtuous, all that was praiseworthy and excellent; while the degenerate race of the moderns exhibited nothing but effeminacy and corruption.

The vacation of the court of session afforded him sufficient leisure to retire every year, in spring and in autumn, to the country; and he used them to dress in a style of simplicity, as if he had been only a plain farmer; and to live among the people upon his estate, with all the kind familiarity and attention of an aged father among his grown-up children. Although his estate, from the old leases, afforded comparatively but a moderate income, he would never raise the rents, or displace an old tenant to make room for a new one who offered a higher rent. In imitation of the rural economy of some of the ancients, whom he chiefly admired, he accounted population the true wealth of an estate, and was desirous of no improvement so much as of increasing the number of souls upon his lands, so as to make it greater, in proportion to the extent, than that of those upon the estate of any neighbouring landholder. It was there he had the pleasure of receiving Dr Samuel Johnson, with his friend James Boswell, at the time when these two gentlemen were upon their well-known tour through the Highlands of Scotland. Johnson admired nothing in literature so much as the display of a keen discrimination of human character, a just apprehension of the principles of moral action, and that vigorous common sense which is the most happily applicable to the ordinary conduct of life. Monboddo delighted in the refinements, the subtleties, the abstractions, the affectations of literature; and in comparison with these, despised the groanings of modern taste and of common affairs. Johnson thought learning and science to be little valuable, except so far as they could be made subservient to the purposes of living usefully and happily with the world, upon his own terms. Monboddo's favourite science taught him to look down with contempt upon all sublunary, and especially upon all modern things; and to fit life to literature and philosophy, not literature and philosophy to life. James Boswell, therefore, in carrying Johnson to visit Monboddo, probably thought of pitting them one against another, as two game cocks, and promised himself much sport from the colloquial contest which he expected to ensue between them. But Monboddo was too hospitable and courteous to enter into keen contention with a stranger in his own house. There was much talk between them, but no angry controversy, no exaggeration of that dislike for each other's well-known peculiarities with which they had met. Johnson, it is true, still continued to think Lord Monboddo what he called a prig in literature.

Lord Monboddo used frequently to visit London, to which he was allured by the opportunity that great metropolis affords of enjoying the conversation of a vast number of men of profound erudition. A journey to the capital became a favourite amusement of his periods of vacation from the business of the court to which he belonged; and, for a time, he made this journey once a year. A carriage, a vehicle that was not in common use among the ancients, he considered as an engine of effeminacy and sloth, which it was disgraceful for a man to make use of in travelling. To be dragged at the tail of a horse, instead of mounting upon his back, seemed, in his eyes, to be a truly ludicrous degradation of the genuine dignity of human nature. In all his journeys, therefore, between Edinburgh and London, he was wont to ride on horseback, with a single servant attending him. He continued this practice, without finding it too fatiguing for his strength, till he was upwards of eighty years of age. Within these few years, on his return from a last visit, which he made on purpose to take leave, before his death, of all his old friends in London, he became exceedingly ill upon the road, and was unable to proceed; and had he not been overtaken by a Scotch friend, who prevailed upon him to travel the remainder of the way in a carriage, he might, perhaps, have actually perished by the way side, or breathed his last in some dirty inn. Since that time, he did not again attempt an equestrian journey to London.

In London, his visits were exceedingly acceptable to all his friends, whether of the literary or fashionable world. He delighted to shew himself at court; and the king is said to have taken a pleasure in conversing with the old man with a distinguishing notice that could not but be very flattering to him.

A constitution of body, naturally framed to wear well and last long, was strengthened to Lord Monboddo by exercise, guarded by temperance, and by a tenor of mind too firm to be deeply broken in upon by those passions which consume the principles of life. In the country he always used much the exercises of walking in the open air, and of riding. The cold bath was a means of preserving the health, to which he had recourse in all seasons, amidst every severity of the weather, under every inconvenience of indisposition or business, with a perseverance invincible. He was accustomed, alike in winter and in summer, to rise at a very early hour in the morning, and, without loss of time, to betake himself to study or wholesome exercise. It is said, that he even found the use of what he called the air bath, or the practice of occasionally walking about, for some minutes, naked, in a room filled with fresh and cool air, to be highly salutary.

Lord Monboddo is well known to the world as a man of letters. His first publication was "a Dissertation on the Origin and Progress of Language," in 2 vols. 1773; which were followed by four more vols. the last published not long before his death. In this work, intended chiefly to vindicate the honours of Grecian literature, he attributes the origin of alphabetical writing to the Egyptians; and strenuously maintains, that the ouran-outang is a class of the human species, and that his want of speech is merely accidental. He al- To endeavour to establish the reality of the existence of mermaids, and other fictitious animals. He was induced to undertake another work, for the purpose of defending the cause of Greek philosophy; and published, in five vols. 4to, a work entitled, "Antient Metaphysics," which, like the other, is remarkable for a surprising mixture of erudition and genius, with the most absurd whims and conceits.

As a judge, his decisions were found, upright, and learned, and marked with acute discrimination; and free from those paradoxes and partialities which appear in his writings. He attended his judicial duty with indefatigable diligence till within a few days of his death, which happened at his house in Edinburgh, May 26, 1799, at the advanced age of 85.

His eldest daughter married some years before his death. His second daughter, in personal loveliness one of the finest women of the age, was beheld in every public place with general admiration, and was sought in marriage by many suitors. Her mind was endowed with all her father's benevolence of temper, and with all his taste for elegant literature, without any portion of his whims and caprices. It was her chief delight to be the nurse and the companion of his declining age. Her presence contributed to draw around him, in his house, and at his table, all that was truly respectable among the youth of his country. She mingled in the world of fashion, without sharing its follies; and heard those flatteries which are addressed to youth and beauty, without being betrayed to that light and selfish vanity which is often the only sentiment that fills the heart of the highly-praised beauty. She delighted in reading, in literary conversation, in poetry, and in the fine arts, without contracting from this taste, any of that pedantic self-conceit and affectation which usually characterize literary ladies, and whose presence often frightens away the domestic virtues, the graces, the delicacies, and all the more interesting charms of the sex. When Burns, the well-known Scotch poet, first arrived from the plough in Ayrshire to publish his poems in Edinburgh, there was none by whom he was more zealously patronized than by Lord Monboddo and his lovely daughter. No man's feelings were ever more powerfully or exquisitely alive than those of the rustic bard, to the emotions of gratitude, or to the admiration of the good and fair. In a poem which he at that time wrote, as a panegyric address to Edinburgh, he took occasion to celebrate the beauty and excellence of Miss Burnet, in, perhaps, the finest stanza of the whole:

"Thy daughters bright thy walks adorn, "Gay as the gilded summer sky, "Sweet as the dewy milk-white thorn, "Dear as the raptur'd thrill of joy! "Fair Burnet strikes th' adoring eye: "Heaven's beauties on my fancy shine, "I see the Sire of Love on high, "And own his work, indeed, divine."

She was the ornament of the elegant society of the city in which she resided, her father's pride, and the comfort of his domestic life in his declining years. Every amiable and noble sentiment was familiar to her heart, every female virtue was exemplified in her life. Yet, this woman, thus lovely, thus elegant, thus wise and virtuous, was out off in the flower of her age, and left her father bereft of the last tender tie which bound him to society and to life. She died about six years before him of a consumption; a disease that in Scotland proves too often fatal to the loveliest and most promising among the fair and the young. Neither his philosophy, nor the necessary torpor of the feelings of extreme old age, were capable of preventing Lord Monboddo from being very deeply affected by so grievous a loss; and from that time he began to droop exceedingly in his health and spirits. Edin. Mag.

Burnet. See Poterium and Sanguisorba, Botany Index.