Burnley

“ This mode of punishing female offenders has long beenndisused in Burnley and the neighbourhood. The places, however, can still be identified. The pit for Burnley was formed on what is now termed Brown Hill. ”

“ For thirty-odd years old Major Burnley lived on one side of his house and his wife lived on the other, neither of them ever crossing an imaginary dividing line that ran down the middle of the hall, having for their medium of intercourse all that time a lean, spinster daughter, in whose grey and barren life churchwork and these strange home duties took the place that Nature had intended to be filled by a husband and by babies and grand-babies. ”

“ There are a large number of modern churches and chapels, a handsome town-hall, market hall, museum and art gallery, school of science, municipal technical school, various benevolent institutions, and pleasant public parks and recreation grounds. The principal industries are cotton-weaving, worsted-making, iron-founding, coal-mining, quarrying, brick-burning and the making of sanitary wares. It has been suggested that Burnley may coincide with Brunanburh, the battlefield on which the Saxons conquered the Dano-Celtic force in 937. ”

“ Burnley is now a large manufacturing town of seventy thousand inhabitants, but in those days it was just rising in importance, and a few years earlier it had been a small country town in an uncommonly aristocratic neighborhood. The gate of Towneley Park opens now almost upon the town itself, and in former times there were many other seats of the greater or lesser squires within a radius of a very few miles. It is a common mistake in the south of England to suppose that Lancashire is a purely commercial county. ”

“ Lazare, Havre, Southampton, Waterloo, Charing Cross, Dover, Calais, Gare du Nord, rue Cardinet goods station, Rouen, the change must have been made. Burnley made a mental note that every part of that journey must be the subject of the closest inquiry.
He went a step further. At the end of each of the three journeys it was met by a middle-sized, black-bearded, French-looking man. In the case of the third journey that man was Felix. In the two earlier, his identity was not definitely known, but he was like Felix. ”

“ At Burnley, last night, (Burnley is a town with eight or ten thousand inhabitants) , there was a meeting consisting of 1,000 or 1,200 persons, which was addressed by the deputation from the League; and at the conclusion of the meeting, a subscription of £470 was made to the fund. (Loud applause.) I merely mention these things in order that you may not suppose that you are doing all-the work. (Hear, hear.) There are many towns who are as zealous as Manchester, though, from peculiar circumstances, they are not able to make quite as much noise on the subject. ”

“ Good-night.’
‘Hard lines being done out of our evening,’ said Lefarge, when they had left the great man’s room. ‘I was going to propose the Folies Bergères. It’s not too late yet, though. What do you say?’
‘I’m on,’ answered Burnley, ‘but I don’t want to stay more than an hour or so. I can always work better on plenty of sleep.’
‘Right,’ returned Lefarge, and, calling a taxi, the two friends were driven to the famous music-hall.
Lefarge called for Burnley the next morning at the latter’s hotel, and they made their way to the superintendent’s office at the Gare St. Lazare. ”

“ In the Jardin Anglais they overtook Dr. Franchi and his niece, making their way to the Assembly Hall. The ex-cardinal was [Pg 110] greatly moved. “Poor Dr. Chang,” he lamented, “and Burnley too, of all men! A wit, a scholar, a philosopher, a metaphysician, a theologian, a man of affairs. In fine, a man one could talk to. What a mind! I am greatly attached to Lord Burnley. They must be found, gentlemen. Alive or (unthinkable thought) dead, they must be found. The Assembly must do nothing else until this sinister mystery is unravelled. We must employ detectives. We must follow every clue.” ”

“ On the left, some half-dozen miles off, lay Burnley, and the greater part of the land in this direction, being uninclosed and thinly peopled, had a dark dreary look, that served to enhance the green beauty of the well-cultivated district on the right. Behind the mansion, thick woods extended to the very confines of Pendle Forest, of which, indeed, they originally formed part, and here, if the course of the stream, flowing through the gully of Sabden, were followed, every variety of brake, glen, and dingle, might be found. ”

“ Burnley (87) , a manufacturing town in Lancashire, 27 m. N. of Manchester; with cotton mills, foundries, breweries, &c.
Burnouf, Eugene, an illustrious Orientalist, born in Paris; professor of Sanskrit in the College of France; an authority on Zend or Zoroastrian literature; edited the text of and translated the "Bhâgavata Purána," a book embodying Hindu mythology; made a special study of Buddhism; wrote an introduction to the history of the system (1801-1852) .
Burns, John, politician and Socialist, born at Vauxhall, of humble parentage; bred to be an engineer ”

“ Burnley turned to go on, but his habit of thinking things out reasserted itself, and he stood gazing at the marks and slowly pondering. He was puzzled that the steps were so close together. He took out his rule and re-measured the distance between them. Nineteen inches from heel to heel. That was surely very close. A man of Watty’s size would normally take a step of at least thirty inches, and carters were generally long-stepping men. ”

“ About one year after the death of John Davenport, Harry Burnley and Mrs. Lucy Davenport were married. Several years later they moved to Warren County, Georgia, where they lived and died and were buried. Mrs. Lucy Davenport Burnley was the mother of fourteen children, five by her first marriage and nine by her second. Among her descendants are to be found very many noble men and women in America—distinguished as writers, lawyers and educators, and in every walk of life. Many of her sons and grandsons have sacrificed their lives for their country.—Mrs. ”

“ The dreaded woman thus ceased to exist, but her powers for good or evil were transferred to her companion; and on passing along the road from Burnley to Blackburn we can point out a farm-house at no great distance, with whose thrifty matron no neighbouring farmer will yet dare to quarrel. ”

“ Burnley looked up sharply when he heard this.
“Did your French friend know that?” he asked.
“Le Gautier? No, I’m sure he did not.”
“If you take my advice, Mr. Felix, you won’t count too much on the cask. Indeed, you should prepare yourself for something unpleasant.”
“What do you mean?” exclaimed Felix. “You hinted that you thought the cask contained something besides the money. ”

“ Burnside, near Kendal, was once Brynshead; Brynn, the seat of Lord Gerrard, between Wigan and Newton-in-Mackerfield, was, as I have shown in a previous chapter, anciently written Brun; and, in addition, I have recently seen, in Herman Moll's atlas, published in 1723, this same Brindle, south of Ribble, written Brunall, and, what is still further corroborative, in Christopher Saxton's much earlier map, published in Camden's "Britannia," it is written Brundell, while Bryne and Burnley are spelled as at present. Bryn or bron signifies a little hill, or the slope of a hill. ”

“ The Inspector lit another cigar, as he continued his train of thought. If the motive was what he suspected, who would be a likely person to feel jealousy in reference to Madame? A former lover, he thought. So far they knew of none, and Burnley took a mental note that inquiries must be made to ascertain if such existed. Failing a former lover, the husband immediately came into his mind, and here he seemed on firmer ground. If Madame had had an understanding with Felix, and Boirac had come to know of it, there was the motive at once. ”

“ Fewer sovereigns were found, suggesting that these had been placed at the top of the cask after the remainder of the contents had been packed.
“All the sawdust we can get at is out now,” Burnley said presently, and then, in a lower tone, “I’m afraid it’s a body. I’ve come on a hand.”
“A hand? A body?” cried Felix, his face paling and an expression of fear growing in his eyes. The Chief moved closer to him as the others bent over the cask. ”

“ Burnley yesterday when he came over to buy some eggs from Aunt Elizabeth. I was disappointed because he looks just like other people. I thought a man who didn’t believe in God would look queer in some way. He did not sware either and I was sorry for I have never heard any one sware and I am very angshus to. He has big yellow eyes like Ilse and a loud voice and Rhoda says when he gets mad you can hear him yelling all over Blair Water. There is some mistery about Ilse’s mother which I cannot fathum. Dr. Burnley and Ilse live alone. Rhoda says Dr. ”

“ Burnham was the last of these towns—a place of great size, great riches, and of an absolutely stupendous ugliness—a great collection of ugly, grimy buildings, paved streets, and ghastly-looking tall chimneys, the whole planted at the bottom of a hollow which had [218] once been as fair as valley could be, in the rough, stony moorland style of sparkling stream and rugged rock. Even now, when the veil of smoke permitted one to see them, high and beautiful hills might be perceived, blue, calm and eternal. ”

“ Mighty events turn on a straw; the crossing of a brook decides the conquest of the world. Had this William Burns's small seven acres of nursery-ground anywise prospered, the boy Robert had been sent to school; had struggled forward, as so many weaker men do, to some university; come forth not as a rustic wonder, but as a regular well-trained intellectual workman, and changed the whole course of British Literature,—for it lay in him to have done this! ”

“ He is invited to Edinburgh; hastens thither with anticipating heart; is welcomed as in a triumph, and with universal blandishment and acclamation; whatever is wisest, whatever is greatest or loveliest there, gathers round him, to gaze on his face, to show him honor, sympathy, affection. Burns's appearance among the sages and nobles of Edinburgh must be regarded as one of the most singular phenomena in modern Literature ”

“ One of the half-dozen ancient spellings of the name of the manor of Burnham is Brunan, and the suffix burh means ‘a fortified place.’
Further, men’s bones, Saxon coins, and a Saxon sword have been ploughed up on the adjoining fields; while just south of Burnham there was in the eighteenth century a road known as ‘Bloody Gate’ and just north of it there is still a ‘Dead Man Dale.’ So we shall have to concede that the southern bank of the ‘yellow flood’ has some considerable claims to the possession of the site of the famous battle of Brunanburh. ”

“ It is said that there was no truer gentleman in all Scotland than Robert Burns. And yet he was a farmer all his life, and had never been away from his native little rural village into a city until near the close of his life, when, taking the manuscripts that for some time had been accumulating in the drawer of his writing-table up to Edinburgh, he captivated the hearts of all in the capital. ”

“ The real Burns was not the dropper of tears over ploughed-under weeds but the man who brought in the neighbours for a [Pg 308] kirn-night and kissed the lasses after every dance; the man who sat by farmers’ ingles and on ale-house benches listening to the racy earthy talk of his people and storing his mind with folk sayings and old songs. He was not ashamed of being a Scottish peasant, the heir of all the picturesque and frequently bawdy tradition of Scots folk literature. Neither was the man who wrote, ‘But yet the light that led astray Was light from Heaven’, ashamed of his human nature. ”

“ That the progress of civilisation, apart from Burns, would have ultimately directed the attention of cultivated men to a country so peculiar and poetical as Scotland cannot be doubted; but the rise of Burns hastened the result, as being itself a main element in propelling civilisation and diffusing genuine taste. His dazzling success, too, excited emulation in the breasts of our men of genius, as well as tended to exalt in their eyes a country which had produced such a stalwart and gifted son. ”

“ But no people without tender and strong feelings could have produced or appreciated such a poet as Burns. (By the way, I was astonished to discover, in 1896, that there were more than thirty thousand visitors annually to the birthplace of Burns, as against only twenty thousand to the birthplace of Shakespeare.) Moreover, no people without the right kind of feeling, and plenty of it—aye, and of enthusiasm, too—could have accomplished what Scotland has done. ”

“ Not that the high road between Kilmarnock and Dumfries wouldn't be worth seeing if Burns had never set foot on it, and if no other great ones had passed that way. It would be worth travelling for itself alone, for every mile has its own special beauty. And the more I think of Scotland the more I tell myself she is like a wise connoisseur (I hope that's the word!) who goes ahead of others to a sale of splendid pictures, and secures the finest for herself at a bargain. Several of the prettiest pictures hang on the blue-and-gold walls of the Burns country. ”