The Nuttall Encyclopaedia Part 249

HUMBERT I., king of Italy, son of Victor Emmanuel, whom he succeeded in 1878; took while crown prince an active part in the movement for Italian unity, and distinguished himself by his bravery; _b_. 1844.

HUMBOLDT, FRIEDRICH HEINRICH ALEX., BARON VON, great traveller and naturalist, born in Berlin; devoted all his life to the study of nature in all its departments, travelling all over the Continent, and in 1800, with AIMe BONPLAND (q. v.) for companion, visiting S. America, traversing the Orinoco, and surveying and mapping out in the course of five years Venezuela, Columbia, Ecuador, Peru, and Mexico, the results of which he published in his "Travels"; his chief work is the "Kosmos," or an account of the visible universe, in 4 vols., originally delivered as lectures in Paris in the winter of 1827-28; he was a friend of Goethe, who held him in the highest esteem (1769-1859).

HUMBOLDT, KARL WILHELM VON, an eminent statesman and philologist, born at Potsdam, elder brother of the preceding; represented Prussia at Rome and Vienna, but devoted himself chiefly to literary and scientific pursuits; wrote on politics and aesthetics as well as philology, and corresponded with nearly all the literary grandees of Germany (1767-1835).

HUME, DAVID, philosopher and historian, born in Edinburgh, the younger son of a Berwicks.h.i.+re laird; after trial of law and mercantile life gave himself up to study and speculation; spent much of his life in France, and fraternised with the sceptical philosophers and encyclopedists there; his chief works, "Treatise on Human Nature" (1739), "Essays" (1741-42), "Principles of Morals" (1751), and "History of England" (1754-61); his philosophy was sceptical to the last degree, but from the excess of it provoked a reaction in Germany, headed by Kant, which has yielded positive results; he found in life no connecting principle, no purpose, and had come to regard it as a restless aimless, heaving up and down, swaying to and fro on a waste ocean of blind sensations, without rational plot or counterplot, G.o.d or devil, and had arrived at an absolutely _non-possumus_ stage, which, however, as hinted, was followed by a speedy and steady rebound, in speculation at all events; Hume's history has been characterised by Stopford Brooke as clear in narrative and pure in style, but cold and out of sympathy with his subject, as well as inaccurate; personally, he was a guileless and kindly man (1711-1776).

HUME, JOSEPH, a politician, born in Montrose; studied medicine, and served as a surgeon under the East India Company in India, made his fortune, and came home; adopted the political principles of Bentham and entered Parliament, of which he continued a prominent member till his death; he was an ardent reformer, and lived to see many of the measures he advocated crowned with success (1777-1855).

HUMOUR, distinct from wit, and defined as "a warm, tender, fellow-feeling with all that exists," as "the sport of sensibility and, as it were, the playful, teasing fondness of a mother for a child" ... as "a sort of inverse sublimity exalting into our affections what is below us,... warm and all-embracing as the sun."

HUNDRED DAYS, the name given to the period between Napoleon's return from Elba and his abdication, from Mar. 10 to June 28, 1815, after Waterloo.

HUNDYADES JOHN CORVINUS, a Hungarian captain of the 14th century, a formidable foe of the Turks.

HUNGARY (18,556), the eastern part of Austro-Hungary, including Hungary proper, Transylvania, Croatia, and Slavonia, and, except in military and diplomatic matters and customs dues, with a considerable amount of self-government independent of Austria, differing from it, as it does, in race, language, and many other respects, to such a degree as gives rise to much dissension, and every now and then threatens disruption.

HUNS, THE, a horde of barbarians of Mongolian origin who invaded Europe from the sh.o.r.es of the Caspian Sea in two wars, the first in the 4th century, which at length subsided, and the second in the 5th century, ultimately under Atilla, which, in the main body of them at all events, was driven back and even dispersed; they have been described as a race with broad shoulders, flat noses, small black eyes buried in the head, and without beards.

HUNT, HOLMAN, painter, born in London; became a pupil of Rossetti, and "his greatest disciple," and joined the Pre-Raphaelite movement; he began with "worldly subjects," but soon quitted these "virtually for ever" under Rossetti's influence, and "rose into the spiritual pa.s.sion which first expressed itself in his 'Light of the World,'" with this difference, as Ruskin points out, between him and his "forerunner," that whereas Rossetti treated the story of the New Testament as a mere thing of beauty, with Hunt, "when once his mind entirely fastened on it, it became ... not merely a Reality, not merely the greatest of Realities, but the only Reality"; in this religious realistic spirit, as Ruskin further remarks, all Hunt's great work is done, and he notices how in all subjects which fall short of the religious element, "his power also is shortened, and he does those things worst which are easiest to other men"; his princ.i.p.al works in this spirit are "The Scape-Goat," "The Finding of Christ in the Temple," "The Shadow of Death," and the "Triumph of the Innocents," to which we may add "The Strayed Sheep," remarkable as well for its vivid suns.h.i.+ne, "producing," says Ruskin, "the same impressions on the mind as are caused by the light itself"; _b_. 1827.

HUNT, LEIGH, essayist and poet; was of the c.o.c.kney school, a friend of Keats and Sh.e.l.ley; edited the _Examiner_, a Radical organ; was a busy man but a thriftless, and always in financial embarra.s.sment, though latterly he had a fair pension; lived near Carlyle, who at one time saw a good deal of him, his household, and its disorderliness, an eyesore to Carlyle, a "_poetical tinkerdom_" he called it, in which, however, he received his visitors "in the spirit of a king, apologising for nothing"; Carlyle soon tired of him, though he was always ready to help him when in need (1784-1859).

HUNTER, JOHN, anatomist and surgeon, born near East Kilbride, Lanarks.h.i.+re; started practice as a surgeon in London, became surgeon to St. George's Hospital, and at length surgeon to the king; is distinguished for his operations in the cure of aneurism; he built a museum, in which he collected an immense number of specimens ill.u.s.trative of subjects of medical study, which, after his death, was purchased by Government (1728-1793).

HUNTER, SIR WILLIAM, Indian statistician, in the Indian Civil Service, and at the head of the Statistical Department; has written several statistical accounts, the "Gazetteer of India," and other elaborate works on India; with Lives of the Earl of Mayo and the Marquis of Dalhousie; _b_. 1862.

HUNTINGDON (4), the county town of Huntingdons.h.i.+re, stands on the left bank of the Ouse 59 m. N. of London; has breweries, brick-works, and nurseries, and was the birthplace of Oliver Cromwell.

HUNTINGDON, COUNTESS OF, a leader among the Whitfield Methodists, and foundress of a college for the "Connexion" at Cheshunt (1707-1791).

HUNTINGDONs.h.i.+RE (57), an undulating county NE. of the Fen district, laid out for most part in pasture and dairy land; many Roman remains are to be found scattered about in it.

HURD, RICHARD, English bishop in succession of Lichfield and Worcester; was both a religious writer and a critic; was the author of "Letters on Chivalry and Romance," "Dissertations on Poetry," and "Commentaries on Horace's Ars Poetica," the last much admired by Gibbon (1720-1808).

HURON, a lake in N. America, 263 m. long and 70 m. broad, the second largest on the average of the five on the Lawrence basin, interspersed with numerous islands.

HURONS, THE, a tribe of Red Indians of the Iroquois family.

HUSKISSON, WILLIAM, an English statesman and financier; distinguished for his services when in office in the relaxation of restrictions on trade (1770-1830).

HUSS, JOHN, a Bohemian church reformer; was a disciple of Wyclif, and did much to propagate his teaching, in consequence of which he was summoned in 1414 to answer for himself before the Council of Constance; went under safe-conduct from the emperor; "they laid him instantly in a stone dungeon, three feet wide, six feet high, seven feet long; burnt the true voice of him out of this world; choked it in smoke and fire"

(1373-1415).

HUTCHESON, FRANCIS, moral philosopher, born in Ulster, son of a Presbyterian minister; educated in Glasgow; became professor in the university there and founder of the Scotch school of philosophy, who, according to Dr. Stirling, has not received the honour in that regard which is his due (1094-1747).

HUTCHINSON, ANNE, a religious fanatic, born in England, settled in New England, U.S.; expelled from the colony for Antinomian heresy, took refuge in Rhode Island, and was with her family butchered by the Indians (1590-1643).

HUTCHINSON, COLONEL, one of the Puritan leaders, and a prominent actor in the Puritan revolt, to the extent of signing the death-warrant of the king, but broke partners.h.i.+p as a republican with Cromwell when he a.s.sumed sovereign power, and sullenly refused to be reconciled to the Protector, though he begged him towards his end beseechingly as his old comrade in arms (1616-1664).

HUTCHINSON, JOHN, a theological faddist, born in Yorks.h.i.+re; in his "Thoughts concerning Religion," derived all religion and philosophy from the Bible, but directly, as he insisted, from the original Hebrew, in which view he had a following of a few intelligent people (1674-1737).

HUTTEN, ULRICH VON, a zealous humanist and reformer, born in the castle of Steckelberg, in Hesse, of an ancient and n.o.ble family; allied himself as a scholar with Erasmus, and then with Luther as a man; entered heart and soul into the Reformation of the latter to a rupture with the former, and by his writings, which included invectives against the clergy and appeals to the nation, did much, amid many perils, to advance the cause of German emanc.i.p.ation from the thraldom of the Church (1488-1523).

HUTTON, CHARLES, a mathematician, born in Newcastle; became professor at the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich; wrote on mathematics and physics (1737-1825).

HUTTON, JAMES, celebrated geologist, born in Edinburgh; bred to medicine, but devoted himself to agriculture and chemistry, which led on to geology; was the author of the Plutonic theory of the earth, which ascribes the inequalities and other phenomena in the crust of it to the agency of the heat at the centre (1726-1797).

HUXLEY, THOMAS HENRY, eminent scientist in the department of natural history, born at Ealing, Middles.e.x; was professor of Natural History in the Royal School of Mines; distinguished by his studies and discoveries in different sections of the animal kingdom, in morphology and palaeontology; was a zealous advocate of evolution, in particular the views of Darwin, and a champion of science against the orthodoxy of the Church; he was a man of eminent literary ability as well as scientific, and of the greatest in that regard among scientific men (1825-1895).

HUYGENS, CHRISTIAN, a Dutch geometrician, physicist, and astronomer, born at The Hague; published the first scientific work on the calculation of probabilities, improved the telescope, broached the undulatory theory of light, discovered the fourth satellite of Saturn, invented the pendulum clock, and stands as a physicist midway between Galileo and Newton (1629-1093).

HYDASPES, the ancient name of the Jhelum, the northernmost tributary of the Indus.

HYDER ALI, a Mohammedan ruler of Mysore; raised himself to be commander-in-chief of the army; organised it on the French model; unseated the rajah; conquered Calicut, Bednor, and Kananur; waged war successfully against the English and the Mahrattas, and left his kingdom to his son TIPPOO SAIB (q. v.) (1728-1782).