an artificial hillock or mound, used in ancient times as a repository for the dead. They were formed either of stones heaped up, or of earth. The former, more generally known by the name of cairns, are almost exclusively confined to Scotland. Of the latter, Dr Plott takes notice of two sorts in Oxfordshire; one placed on the military ways, the other in the fields or woods; the first sort being probably of Roman origin, the other erected by the Britons or Danes. Monuments of this kind are also very frequent in Scotland. On digging into barrows, urns made of calcined earth, and containing burnt bones and ashes, have sometimes been found; in others are found stone chests, containing bones entire; in others, again, bones neither lodged in chests nor deposited in urns. These tumuli are round, not greatly elevated, and generally at their bases surrounded by a fosse. They are of different sizes, being in proportion, it is supposed, to the rank and power of the deceased person. Of those found in the Orkneys, some are formed of earth alone, whilst others consist of stone covered with earth. In one of the former was discovered a coffin made of six flat stones, but too short to receive a body at full length. The latter feature is a general characteristic of all these sarcophagi; the skeletons found in them lie with the knees pressed to the breast, and the legs doubled along the thighs. In one of them were found multitudes of small beetles; and as similar insects have been discovered in the bag which included the sacred ibis among the Egyptians, we may suppose that the nation to whom these tumuli belonged had the same superstition respecting them as the subjects of the Pharaohs. Ancient Greece and Latium concurred with the natives of this island in the erection of sepulchral tumuli. Patroclus among the Greeks, and Hector among the Trojans, received the same funeral honours with our Caledonian heroes; and the ashes of Dercennus the Laurentine monarch could boast of no prouder receptacle. The urn and pall of the Trojan warrior might perhaps be more superb than those of a British leader; but the monument of each was composed of the same rude materials, dug from the bosom of the earth. The Grecian barrows, however, do not seem to have been all equally simple. The barrow of Alyattes, father of Croesus king of Lydia, is described by Herodotus (i. 93.) as a most superb monument, inferior only to the works of the Egyptians and Babylonians. It was a vast mound of earth nearly a mile in circumference, heaped on a basement of large stones, by three classes of the people, one of which was composed of girls devoted to prostitution. Alyattes died in the year B.C. 560; but Herodotus informs us, that, in his time, above a century afterwards, five stones, or stela, on which letters were engraved, remained on the top, recording what each class had performed; and from the measurement it appeared that the greater portion of the work had been done by females. It was customary among the Greeks to place on barrows the image of some animal, or round pillars (stele), with inscriptions. The famous barrow of the Athenians in the plain of Marathon, described by Pausanias, is an instance of the latter usage. An ancient monument in Italy near the Appian Way, vulgarly called the sepulchre of the Curatii, has the same number of termini as the barrow of Alyattes; the basement, which is square, supporting five round pyramids.

Barrows, and similar tumuli, are also found in great numbers in America. These are of different sizes; some of them being constructed of earth, and others of loose stones. That they were repositories of the dead has been generally believed; but on what particular occasions they were constructed is matter of conjecture. Some have thought that they covered the bones of those who had fallen in battle on the spot; others ascribe them to the custom said to prevail among the Indians, of collecting at certain periods the bones of all their dead, wheresoever deposited at the time of death; whilst others, again, suppose them to have been the general sepulchre for towns that existed on or near the spots where they are met with. For a minute and interesting account of one of these remarkable tumuli, the reader may consult Mr Jefferson's Notes on the State of Virginia, p. 156. See also Worsae's Scandinavian Antiquities; and Hamilton's Researches in Asia Minor, vol. i. Barrow, a large river of Ireland, which rises in Queen's county, and being joined by the Nore and the Suir, falls into the sea at Waterford Bay. In spring-tides, vessels of 300 tons can ascend to New Ross, and it is navigable for barges to Athy, where it is joined by a branch of the Grand Canal.

Barrow, Isaac, an eminent mathematician and divine, was the son of Mr Thomas Barrow, a linen-draper in London, where he was born in 1630. He was at first placed for two or three years at the Charter-house School. There, however, his conduct gave but little hopes of his ever succeeding as a scholar; for he was extremely fond of fighting, and of promoting pugnacity among his school-fellows. But being removed from this establishment, his disposition took a happier turn; and having soon made considerable progress in learning, he was admitted a pensioner of St Peter's College, and afterwards of Trinity College, Cambridge, where he applied himself with great diligence to the study of literature and science, especially of natural philosophy. He afterwards turned his thoughts to the profession of physic, and made some progress in anatomy, botany, and chemistry; after which he studied chronology, geometry, and astronomy. He then travelled into France and Italy, and in a voyage from Leghorn to Smyrna gave proofs of great personal bravery; for the ship having been attacked by an Algerine pirate, Barrow remained upon deck, and fought with the utmost intrepidity, until the pirate, unprepared for the stout resistance made by the ship, sheered off and left her to pursue her voyage.

At Smyrna he met with a most kind reception from Mr Bretton, the English consul, upon whose death he afterwards wrote a Latin elegy. From this place he proceeded to Constantinople, where he received similar civilities from Sir Thomas Bendish, the English ambassador, and Sir Jonathan Dawes, with whom he afterwards contracted an intimate friendship. While at Constantinople he read and studied the works of Chrysostom, once bishop of that see, whom he preferred to all the other fathers. He resided in Turkey somewhat more than a year, after which he proceeded to Venice, and thence returned home through Germany and Holland in 1659. Immediately on his return he received episcopal ordination from Bishop Brownrigg; and in 1660 he was appointed to the Greek professorship at Cambridge. When he entered upon this office, he intended to have professed upon the tragedies of Sophocles; but he altered his intention, and made choice of Aristotle's Rhetoric. His lectures on this subject, however, having been lent to a friend who never returned them, are irrecoverably lost. In July 1662 he was elected professor of geometry in Gresham College, on the recommendation of Dr Wilkins, master of Trinity College, and afterwards bishop of Chester; and in May 1663 he was chosen a fellow of the Royal Society, at the first election made by the council after obtaining their charter. The same year the executors of Mr Lucas, who, according to the will of that individual, had founded a mathematical chair at Cambridge, fixed upon Barrow as the first professor; and although his two professorships were not inconsistent with each other, he chose to resign that of Gresham College, which he did on the 20th May 1664. In 1669 he resigned his mathematical chair to his illustrious friend Isaac Newton, having now determined to renounce the study of mathematics for that of divinity. Upon quitting his professorship, Barrow was only a fellow of Trinity College; but his uncle gave him a small sinecure in Wales, and Dr Seth Ward, bishop of Salisbury, constituted him a prebend in that church. In the year 1670 he was created doctor in divinity by mandate; and, upon the promotion of Dr Pearson, master of Trinity College, to the see of Chester, he was appointed to succeed him by the king's patent, bearing date the 13th February 1672. When the king advanced Barrow to this dignity, he was pleased to say, "he had given it to the best scholar in England."

His Majesty did not speak from report, but from his own knowledge; for the doctor being then his chaplain, His Majesty frequently conversed with him, and in his humorous way used to call him an "unfair preacher," as he exhausted every subject and occasion, and left no room for others to come after him. In 1673 Dr Barrow was chosen vice-chancellor of the university. His scientific works are very numerous, and such as do honour to the science and literature of his country. They are, 1. Euclid's Elements; 2. Euclid's Data; 3. Optical Lectures, read in the public school of Cambridge; 4. Thirteen Geometrical Lectures; 5. The Works of Archimedes, the four Books of Apollonius's Conic Sections, and Theodosius's Sphricics explained in a New Method; 6. A Lecture, in which Archimedes's Theorems of the Sphere and Cylinder are investigated and briefly demonstrated; 7. Mathematical Lectures, read in the public schools of the university of Cambridge. The above were all written in Latin. His English works have been collected and printed together in four volumes folio. "The name of Dr Barrow," says Grainger, "will ever be illustrious for a strength of mind and a compass of knowledge that did honour to his country. He was unrivalled in mathematical learning, and especially in the sublime geometry; in which he has been excelled only by one man, and that man was his pupil, the great Sir Isaac Newton. The same genius that seemed to be born only to bring hidden truths to light, to rise to the heights or descend to the depths of science, would sometimes amuse itself in the flowery paths of poetry; and he composed verses both in Greek and Latin. He at length gave himself up entirely to divinity; and particularly to the most useful part of it, that which has a tendency to make men wiser and better. He has, in his excellent sermons on the Creed, solved every difficulty and removed every obstacle that opposed itself to our faith, and made divine revelation as clear as the demonstrations in his own Euclid. In his sermons he knew not how to leave off writing till he had exhausted his subject; and his admirable discourse on the duty and reward of bounty to the poor took him up three hours and a half in preaching." This great man, who was a bright example of Christian virtue, as well as a prodigy of learning, died on the 4th of May 1677, in the forty-seventh year of his age; and was interred in Westminster Abbey, where a monument, surmounted with his bust, was soon after erected, by the contributions of his friends.

Barrow, Sir John, Bart., F.R.S., LL.D., was born near Ulverston, in Lancashire, June 19, 1764. His early opportunities of instruction were limited; but by self-education he matured those powers which eventually were turned to so good an account. He displayed, at an early age, a decided inclination for mathematical pursuits. Some of his earlier years were passed as superintending clerk of an iron foundry at Liverpool; and he afterwards taught mathematics at an academy in Greenwich. While in this latter situation he was fortunate in obtaining, through the interest of Sir George Staunton, a place in the first British embassy to China. He was thus enabled to put his foot on the first step of the ladder of ambition; but each step in his subsequent career may be fairly said to have been achieved by himself. The account of the embassy, published by Sir George Staunton, records many of Mr Barrow's valuable contributions to literature and science connected with China. This work, together with his own subsequently published volume of travels, is ample evidence how well his time had been employed. Few persons could within the space of a few months overcome all the practical difficulties of such a language as the Chinese; but Mr Barrow soon began to converse in it, and acquired a complete knowledge of its theory. His papers on this subject in the Quarterly Review (to which periodical he was for many years a very frequent contributor) contain the best and most popular account of that singular language ever presented to the British public. Although Mr Barrow ceased to be personally connected with our affairs in China after the return of the embassy in 1794, he always continued to take a lively interest in the varying circumstances of our relations with that empire. On the occasion of the second embassy under Lord Amherst in 1816, he was of course consulted by the ruling powers; but unfortunately his advice was not taken; and in consequence of the injudicious rejection of the proposal which he had suggested for getting rid of the vexatious question of the Chinese ceremony, Lord Amherst and his colleagues were compelled to abandon the personal reception of the mission for the sake of preserving the honour and interests of the English in China, which would have been essentially damaged by the acceptance of the terms upon which it was offered. Mr Barrow was likewise consulted on the occasion of our recent conflict with China, which, it is to be hoped, has secured our future peace with that country.

Lord Macartney was naturally anxious to secure the aid of such a man as Mr Barrow in his next public service, his important and delicate mission to settle the government of our newly-acquired colony of the Cape of Good Hope. Mr Barrow was intrusted with our first communication with the Caffre tribes; and it would have been well if the spirit, judgment, and humanity, which he then displayed had more uniformly governed our subsequent transactions with that remarkable race. The two volumes of his history of the colony made the public at once fully acquainted with the extent, capacities, and resources of that important, but till then little understood, acquisition of the British crown.

There is little doubt that it was the perusal of this valuable work which mainly decided Lord Melville to accept Lord Macartney's recommendation of a perfect stranger to him, as Mr Barrow then was, as his second secretary of the admiralty. Mr Barrow's subsequent career for forty years at the admiralty, embracing the whole period of the last war, will be for ever historically associated with the civil administration of our navy for the same period. He enjoyed the uniform esteem and confidence of the eleven chief lords who successively presided at the admiralty board during that period, and more especially of King William IV., while lord high admiral, who honoured him with tokens of his personal regard. Mr Barrow received the honour of the baronetcy during the short administration of Sir Robert Peel in 1835; and the information was communicated to him by Sir Robert in a letter acknowledging, in highly gratifying terms, his literary and scientific eminence, and his "long, most able, and most faithful public service."

Sir John Barrow, besides the works already mentioned, published the lives of Lord Macartney, Lord Anson, Lord Howe, and Peter the Great; and he was also the author of several valuable contributions to the seventh edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica.

Sir John retired from public life in 1845, in consideration of his advanced years, although still in vigorous possession of all the mental and bodily powers required for the due discharge of the functions of his office. In the course of the succeeding three years his vital energies gradually declined, but he nevertheless continued so fully in the enjoyment of his faculties, writing a history of the modern arctic voyages of discovery, of which he was a great promoter, as well as his autobiography, that his friends and relatives entertained no apprehension that his end was so near. He expired suddenly on the 23rd November 1848, in the 85th year of his age, much honoured and respected by his friends and the public at large.