Part 249 (1/2)
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).