See T. Gent,Annales Regioduni Hullini(York, 1735, reprinted 1869); G. Hadley,History of the Town and County of Kingston-upon-Hull(Hull, 1788); C. Frost,Notices relative to the Early History of the Town and Port of Hull(London, 1827); J. J. Sheaham,General and Concise History of Kingston-upon-Hull(London and Beverley, 1864).
See T. Gent,Annales Regioduni Hullini(York, 1735, reprinted 1869); G. Hadley,History of the Town and County of Kingston-upon-Hull(Hull, 1788); C. Frost,Notices relative to the Early History of the Town and Port of Hull(London, 1827); J. J. Sheaham,General and Concise History of Kingston-upon-Hull(London and Beverley, 1864).
HULL(in O. Eng.hulu, fromhelan, to cover, cf. Ger.Hülle, covering), the outer covering, pod, or shell of beans, peas, &c., also the enclosing envelope of a chrysalis. The word may be the same as “hull,” meaning the body of a ship without its masts or superstructure, &c., but in this sense the word is more usually connected with “hold,” the interior cargo-carrying part of a vessel. This word was borrowed, as a nautical term, from the Dutch,hol(cognate with “hole”), thedbeing due to confusion with “to hold,” “grasp” (O. Eng.healdan). The meanings of “hull” and “hold” are somewhat far apart, and the closest sense resemblance is to the word “hulk,” which is not known till about a century later.
HULLAH, JOHN PYKE(1812-1884), English composer and teacher of music, was born at Worcester on the 27th June 1812. He was a pupil of William Horsley from 1829, and entered the Royal Academy of Music in 1833. He wrote an opera to words by Dickens,The Village Coquettes, produced in 1836;The Barbers of Bassorain 1837, andThe Outpostin 1838, the last two at Covent Garden. From 1839, when he went to Paris to investigate various systems of teaching music to large masses of people, he identified himself with Wilhem’s system of the “fixed Do,” and his adaptation of that system was taught with enormous success from 1840 to 1860. In 1847 a large building in Long Acre, called St Martin’s Hall, was built by subscription and presented to Hullah. It was inaugurated in 1850 and burnt to the ground in 1860, a blow from which Hullah was long in recovering. He had risked his all in the maintenance of the building, and had to begin the world again. A series of lectures was given at the Royal Institution in 1861, and in 1864 he lectured in Edinburgh, but in the following year was unsuccessful in his application for the Reid professorship. He conducted concerts in Edinburgh in 1866 and 1867, and the concerts of the Royal Academy of Music from 1870 to 1873; he had been elected to the committee of management in 1869. In 1872 he was appointed by the Council of Education musical inspector of training schools for the United Kingdom. In 1878 he went abroad to report on the condition of musical education in schools, and wrote a very valuable report, quoted in the memoir of him published by his wife in 1886. He was attacked by paralysis in 1880, and again in 1883. His compositions, which remained popular for some years after his death in 1884, consisted mainly of ballads; but his importance in the history of music is owing to his exertions in popularizing musical education, and his persistent opposition to the Tonic Sol-Fa system, which had a success he could not foresee. His objections to it were partly grounded on the character of the music which was in common use among the early teachers of the system. While it cannot be doubted that Hullah would have won more success if he had not opposed the Tonic Sol-Fa movement so strenuously, it must be confessed that his work was of great value, for he kept constantly in view and impressed upon all who followed him or learnt from him the supreme necessity of maintaining the artistic standard of the music taught and studied, and of not allowing trumpery compositions to usurp the place of good music on account of the greater ease with which they could be read.
HULME, WILLIAM(1631-1691), English philanthropist, was born in the neighbourhood of Manchester, and died on the 29th of October 1691. Having lost his only son Banastre, Hulme left his property in trust to maintain “four exhibitioners of the poorest sort of bachelors for the space of four years” at Brasenose College, Oxford. This was the beginning of the Hulme Trust. Its property was in Manchester, and owing to its favourable situation its value increased rapidly. Eventually in 1881 a scheme was drawn up by the charity commissioners, by which (as amended in 1907) the trust is now governed. Its income of about £10,000 a year is devoted to maintaining the Hulme Grammar School in Manchester and to assisting other schools, to supporting a theological college, Hulme Hall, attached to the university of Manchester, and to providing a number of scholarships and exhibitions at Brasenose College.
See J. Croston,Hulme’s Charity(1877).
See J. Croston,Hulme’s Charity(1877).
HÜLS,a town of Germany, in the Prussian Rhine province, 4 m. N. of Crefeld and 17 N.W. of Düsseldorf by rail. Pop. (1905) 6510. It has two Roman Catholic churches, a synagogue and manufactures of damask and velvet. In the neighbourhood ironstone is obtained.
HULSE, JOHN(1708-1790), English divine, was born—the eldest of a family of nineteen—at Middlewich, in Cheshire, in 1708. Entering St John’s College, Cambridge, in 1724, he graduated in 1728; and on taking orders (in 1732) was presented to a small country curacy. His father having died in 1753, Hulse succeeded to his estates in Cheshire, where, owing to feeble health, he lived in retirement till his death in December 1790. He bequeathed his estates to Cambridge University for the purpose of maintaining two divinity scholars (£30 a year each) at St John’s College, of founding a prize for a dissertation, and of instituting the offices of Christian advocate and of Christian preacher or Hulsean lecturer. By a statute in 1860 the Hulsean professorship of divinity was substituted for the office of Christian advocate, and the lectureship was considerably modified. The first course of lectures under the benefaction was delivered in 1820. In 1830 the number of annual lectures or sermons was reduced from twenty to eight; after 1861 they were further reduced to a minimum of four. The annual value of the Hulse endowment is between £800 and £900, of which eight-tenths go to the professor of divinity and one-tenth to the prize and lectureship respectively.
An account of the Hulsean lectures from 1820 to 1894 is given in J. Hunt’sReligious Thought in the 19th Century, 332-338; among the lecturers have been Henry Alford (1841), R. C. Trench (1845), Christopher Wordsworth (1847), Charles Merivale (1861), James Moorhouse (1865), F. W. Farrar (1870), F. J. A. Hort (1871), W. Boyd Carpenter (1878), W. Cunningham (1885), M. Creighton (1893).
An account of the Hulsean lectures from 1820 to 1894 is given in J. Hunt’sReligious Thought in the 19th Century, 332-338; among the lecturers have been Henry Alford (1841), R. C. Trench (1845), Christopher Wordsworth (1847), Charles Merivale (1861), James Moorhouse (1865), F. W. Farrar (1870), F. J. A. Hort (1871), W. Boyd Carpenter (1878), W. Cunningham (1885), M. Creighton (1893).
HUMACAO,a small city and the capital of a municipal district and department of the same name, in Porto Rico, 46 m. S.E. of San Juan. Pop. (1899) of the city, 4428; and of the municipal district, 14,313. Humacao is attractively situated near the E. coast, 9 m. from the port of Naguabo and a little over 6 m. from its own port of Punta Santiago, with which it is connected by a good road; a railway was under construction in 1908, and some of the sugar factories of the department are now connected by rail with the port. The department covers the eastern end of the island and includes all the islands off its coast, among which are Culebra and Vieques; the former (pop. in 1899, 704) has two excellent harbours and is used as a U.S. naval station; the latter is 21 m. long by 6 m. wide and in 1899 had a population of nearly 6000. Grazing is the principal industry, but sugar-cane, tobacco and fruit are cultivated. There are valuable forests in the mountainous districts, a part of which has been set aside for preservation under the name of the Luquillo forest reserve. Humacao was incorporated as a city in 1899. It suffered severely in the hurricane of 1898, the damage not having been fully repaired as late as 1906.
HUMANE SOCIETY, ROYAL.This society was founded in England in 1774 for the purpose of rendering “first aid” in cases of drowning and for restoring life by artificial means to those apparently drowned. Dr William Hawes (1736-1808), anEnglish physician, became known in 1773 for his efforts to convince the public that persons apparently dead from drowning might in many cases be resuscitated by artificial means. For a year he paid a reward out of his own pocket to any one bringing him a body rescued from the water within a reasonable time of immersion. Dr Thomas Cogan (1736-1818), another English physician, who had become interested in the same subject during a stay at Amsterdam, where was instituted in 1767 a society for preservation of life from accidents in water, joined Hawes in his crusade. In the summer of 1774 each of them brought fifteen friends to a meeting at the Chapter Coffee-house, St Paul’s Churchyard, when the Royal Humane Society was founded. The society, the chief offices of which are at 4 Trafalgar Square, London, has upwards of 280 depôts throughout the kingdom, supplied with life-saving apparatus. The chief and earliest of these depôts is the Receiving House in Hyde Park, on the north bank of the Serpentine, which was built in 1794 on a site granted by George III. Boats and boatmen are kept to render aid to bathers, and in the winter ice-men are sent round to the different skating grounds in and around London. The society distributes money-rewards, medals, clasps and testimonials, to those who save or attempt to save drowning people. It further recognizes “all cases of exceptional bravery in rescuing or attempting to rescue persons from asphyxia in mines, wells, blasting furnaces, or in sewers where foul gas may endanger life.” It further awards prizes for swimming to public schools and training ships. Since 1873 the Stanhope gold medal has been awarded “to the case exhibiting the greatest gallantry during the year.” During the year 1905 873 persons were rewarded for saving or attempting to save 947 lives from drowning. The society is maintained by private subscriptions and bequests. Its motto isLateat scintillula forsan, “a small spark may perhaps lie hid.” (See alsoDrowning and Life-Saving.)
HUMANISM(from Lat.humanus, human, connected withhomo, mankind), in general any system of thought or action which assigns a predominant interest to the affairs of men as compared with the supernatural or the abstract. The term is specially applied to that movement of thought which in western Europe in the 15th century broke through the medieval traditions of scholastic theology and philosophy, and devoted itself to the rediscovery and direct study of the ancient classics. This movement was essentially a revolt against intellectual, and especially ecclesiastical authority, and is the parent of all modern developments whether intellectual, scientific or social (seeRenaissance). The term has also been applied to the philosophy of Comte in virtue of its insistence on the dignity of humanity and its refusal to find in the divine anything external or superior to mankind, and the same tendency has had marked influence over the development of modern Christian theology which inclines to obliterate the old orthodox conception of the separate existence and overlordship of God. The narrow sense of the term survives in modern university terminology. Thus in the University of Oxford the curriculum known asLitterae Humaniores(“Humane Literature”) consists of Latin and Greek literature and philosophy,i.e.of the “arts,” often described in former times as the “polite letters.” In the Scottish universities the professor of Latin is called the professor of “humanity.” The plural “humanities” is a generic term for the classics. In ordinary language the adjective “humane” is restricted to the sense of “kind-hearted,” “unselfish”: the abstract “humanity” has this sense and also the sense of “that which pertains to mankind” derived in this case with the companion adjective “human.”
HUMANITARIANS,a term applied (1) to a school of theologians who repudiate the doctrine of the Trinity and hold an extreme view of the person of Christ as simply human. The adoption of this position by men like Nathaniel Lardner, Joseph Priestley and Theophilus Lindsey in the middle of the 18th century led to the establishment of the first definitely organized Unitarian churches in England. (2) It is also applied to those who believe in the perfectibility of man apart from superhuman aid, especially those who follow the teaching of Pierre Leroux (q.v.). The name is also sometimes given to the Positivists, and in a more general sense, to persons whose chief principle of action is the desire to preserve others from pain and discomfort.
HUMAYUN(1508-1556), Mogul emperor of Delhi, succeeded his father Baber in India in 1530, while his brother Kamran obtained the sovereignty of Kabul and Lahore. Humayun was thus left in possession of his father’s recent conquests, which were in dispute with the Indian Afghans under Sher Shah, governor of Bengal. After ten years of fighting, Humayun was driven out of India and compelled to flee to Persia through the desert of Sind, where his famous son, Akbar the Great, was born in the petty fort of Umarkot (1542). Sher Shah was killed at the storming of Kalinjar (1545), and Humayun, returning to India with Akbar, then only thirteen years of age, defeated the Indo-Afghan army and reoccupied Delhi (1555). India thus passed again from the Afghanis to the Moguls, but six months afterwards Humayun was killed by a fall from the parapet of his palace (1556), leaving his kingdom to Akbar. The tomb of Humayun is one of the finest Mogul monuments in the neighbourhood of Delhi, and it was here that the last of the Moguls, Bahadur Shah, was captured by Major Hodson in 1857.
HUMBER,an estuary on the east coast of England formed by the rivers Trent and Ouse, the northern shore belonging to Yorkshire and the southern to Lincolnshire. The junction of these two important rivers is near the village of Faxfleet, from which point the course of the Humber runs E. for 18 m., and then S.E. for 19 m. to the North Sea. The total area draining to the Humber is 9293 sq. m. The width of the estuary is 1 m. at the head, gradually widening to 3½ m. at 8 m. above the mouth, but here, with a great shallow bay on the Yorkshire side, it increases to 8 m. in width. The seaward horn of this bay, however, is formed by a narrow protruding bank of sand and stones, thrown up by a southward current along the Yorkshire coast, and known as Spurn Head. This reduces the width of the Humber mouth to 5½ m. Except where the Humber cuts through a low chalk ridge, between north and south Ferriby, dividing it into the Wolds of Yorkshire and of Lincolnshire, the shores and adjacent lands are nearly flat. The water is muddy; and the course for shipping considerably exceeds in length the distances given above, by reason of the numerous shoals it is necessary to avoid. The course is carefully buoyed and lighted, for the Humber is an important highway of commerce, having on the Yorkshire bank the great port of Hull, and on the Lincolnshire bank that of Grimsby, while Goole lies on the Ouse a little above the junction with the Trent. Canals connect with the great manufacturing district of South Yorkshire, and the Trent opens up wide communications with the Midlands. The phenomenon of the tidal bore is sometimes seen on the Humber. The action of the river upon the flat Yorkshire shore towards the mouth alters the shore-line constantly. Many ancient villages have disappeared entirely, notably Ravenspur or Ravenser, once a port, represented in parliament under Edward I., and the scene of the landing of Bolingbroke, afterwards Henry IV., in 1399. Soon after this the town, which lay immediately inside Spurn Point, must have been destroyed.
HUMBERT, RANIERI CARLO EMANUELE GIOVANNI MARIA FERDINANDO EUGENIO,King of Italy(1844-1900), son of Victor Emmanuel II. and of Adelaide, archduchess of Austria, was born at Turin, capital of the kingdom of Sardinia, on the 14th of March 1844. His education was entrusted to the most eminent men of his time, amongst others to Massimo d’Azeglio and Pasquale Stanislao Mancini. Entering the army on the 14th of March 1858 with the rank of captain, he was present at the battle of Solferino in 1859, and in 1866 commanded a division at Custozza. Attacked by the Austrian cavalry near Villafranca, he formed his troops into squares and drove the assailants towards Sommacampagna, remaining himself throughout the action in the square most exposed to attack. With Bixio he covered the retreat of the Italian army, receiving the gold medal for valour. On the 21st of April 1868 he married his cousin, Margherita Teresa Giovanna, princess of Savoy, daughterof the duke of Genoa (born at Turin on the 20th of November 1851). On the 11th of November 1869 Margherita gave birth to Victor Emmanuel, prince of Naples, afterwards Victor Emmanuel III. of Italy. Ascending the throne on the death of his father (9th January 1878), Humbert adopted the style “Humbert I. of Italy” instead of Humbert IV., and consented that the remains of his father should be interred at Rome in the Pantheon, and not in the royal mausoleum of Superga (see Crispi). Accompanied by the premier, Cairoli, he began a tour of the provinces of his kingdom, but on entering Naples (November 17, 1878), amid the acclamations of an immense crowd, was attacked by a fanatic named Passanante. The king warded off the blow with his sabre, but Cairoli, in attempting to defend him, was severely wounded in the thigh. The would-be assassin was condemned to death, but the sentence was by the king commuted to one of penal servitude for life. The occurrence upset for several years the health of Queen Margherita. In 1881 King Humbert, again accompanied by Cairoli, resumed his interrupted tour, and visited Sicily and the southern Italian provinces. In 1882 he took a prominent part in the national mourning for Garibaldi, whose tomb at Caprera he repeatedly visited. When, in the autumn of 1882, Verona and Venetia were inundated, he hastened to the spot, directed salvage operations, and provided large sums of money for the destitute. Similarly, on the 28th of July 1883, he hurried to Ischia, where an earthquake had engulfed some 5000 persons. Countermanding the order of the minister of public works to cover the ruins with quicklime, the king prosecuted salvage operations for five days longer, and personally saved many victims at the risk of his own life. In 1884 he visited Busca and Naples, where cholera was raging, helping with money and advice the numerous sufferers, and raising the spirit of the population. Compared with the reigns of his grandfather, Charles Albert, and of his father, Victor Emmanuel, the reign of Humbert was tranquil. Scrupulously observant of constitutional principles, he followed, as far as practicable, parliamentary indications in his choice of premiers, only one of whom—Rudini—was drawn from the Conservative ranks. In foreign policy he approved of the conclusion of the Triple Alliance, and, in repeated visits to Vienna and Berlin, established and consolidated the pact. Towards Great Britain his attitude was invariably cordial, and he considered the Triple Alliance imperfect unless supplemented by an Anglo-Italian navalentente. Favourably disposed towards the policy of colonial expansion inaugurated in 1885 by the occupation of Massawa, he was suspected of aspiring to a vast empire in north-east Africa, a suspicion which tended somewhat to diminish his popularity after the disaster of Adowa on the 1st of March 1896. On the other hand, his popularity was enhanced by the firmness of his attitude towards the Vatican, as exemplified in his telegram declaring Rome “intangible” (September 20, 1886), and affirming the permanence of the Italian possession of the Eternal City. Above all King Humbert was a soldier, jealous of the honour and prestige of the army to such a degree that he promoted a duel between his nephew, the count of Turin, and Prince Henry of Orleans (August 15, 1897) on account of the aspersions cast by the latter upon Italian arms. The claims of King Humbert upon popular gratitude and affection were enhanced by his extraordinary munificence, which was not merely displayed on public occasions, but directed to the relief of innumerable private wants into which he had made personal inquiry. It has been calculated that at least £100,000 per annum was expended by the king in this way. The regard in which he was universally held was abundantly demonstrated on the occasion of the unsuccessful attempt upon his life made by the anarchist Acciarito near Rome on the 22nd of April 1897, and still more after his tragic assassination at Monza by the anarchist Bresci on the evening of the 29th of July 1900. Good-humoured, active, tender-hearted, somewhat fatalistic, but, above all, generous, he was spontaneously called “Humbert the Good.” He was buried in the Pantheon in Rome, by the side of Victor Emmanuel II., on the 9th of August 1900.
(H. W. S.)
HUMBOLDT, FRIEDRICH HEINRICH ALEXANDER,Baron von(1769-1859), German naturalist and traveller, was born at Berlin, on the 14th of September 1769. His father, who was a major in the Prussian army, belonged to a Pomeranian family of consideration, and was rewarded for his services during the Seven Years’ War with the post of royal chamberlain. He married in 1766 Maria Elizabeth von Colomb, widow of Baron von Hollwede, and had by her two sons, of whom the younger is the subject of this article. The childhood of Alexander von Humboldt was not a promising one as regards either health or intellect. His characteristic tastes, however, soon displayed themselves; and from his fancy for collecting and labelling plants, shells and insects he received the playful title of “the little apothecary.” The care of his education, on the unexpected death of his father in 1779, devolved upon his mother, who discharged the trust with constancy and judgment. Destined for a political career, he studied finance during six months at the university of Frankfort-on-the-Oder; and a year later, April 25, 1789, he matriculated at Göttingen, then eminent for the lectures of C. G. Heyne and J. F. Blumenbach. His vast and varied powers were by this time fully developed; and during the vacation of 1789 he gave a fair earnest of his future performances in a scientific excursion up the Rhine, and in the treatise thence issuing,Mineralogische Beobachtungen über einige Basalte am Rhein(Brunswick, 1790). His native passion for distant travel was confirmed by the friendship formed by him at Göttingen with George Forster, Heyne’s son-in-law, the distinguished companion of Captain Cook’s second voyage. Henceforth his studies, which his rare combination of parts enabled him to render at once multifarious, rapid and profound, were directed with extraordinary insight and perseverance to the purpose of preparing himself for his distinctive calling as a scientific explorer. With this view he studied commerce and foreign languages at Hamburg, geology at Freiberg under A. G. Werner, anatomy at Jena under J. C. Loder, astronomy and the use of scientific instruments under F. X. von Zach and J. G. Köhler. His researches into the vegetation of the mines of Freiberg led to the publication in 1793 of hisFlorae Fribergensis Specimen; and the results of a prolonged course of experiments on the phenomena of muscular irritability, then recently discovered by L. Galvani, were contained in hisVersuche über die gereizte Muskel- und Nervenfaser(Berlin, 1797), enriched in the French translation with notes by Blumenbach.
In 1794 he was admitted to the intimacy of the famous Weimar coterie, and contributed (June 1795) to Schiller’s new periodical,Die Horen, a philosophical allegory entitledDie Lebenskraft, oder der rhodische Genius. In the summer of 1790 he paid a flying visit to England in company with Forster. In 1792 and 1797 he was in Vienna; in 1795 he made a geological and botanical tour through Switzerland and Italy. He had obtained in the meantime official employment, having been appointed assessor of mines at Berlin, February 29, 1792. Although the service of the state was consistently regarded by him but as an apprenticeship to the service of science, he fulfilled its duties with such conspicuous ability that he not only rapidly rose to the highest post in his department, but was besides entrusted with several important diplomatic missions. The death of his mother, on the 19th of November 1796, set him free to follow the bent of his genius, and, finally severing his official connexions, he waited for an opportunity of executing his long-cherished schemes of travel. On the postponement of Captain Baudin’s proposed voyage of circumnavigation, which he had been officially invited to accompany, he left Paris for Marseilles with Aimé Bonpland, the designated botanist of the frustrated expedition, hoping to join Bonaparte in Egypt. Means of transport, however, were not forthcoming, and the two travellers eventually found their way to Madrid, where the unexpected patronage of the minister d’Urquijo determined them to make Spanish America the scene of their explorations.
Armed with powerful recommendations, they sailed in the “Pizarro” from Corunna, on the 5th of June 1799, stopped six days at Teneriffe for the ascent of the Peak, and landed, on the16th of July, at Cumana. There Humboldt observed, on the night of the 12-13th of November, that remarkable meteor-shower which forms the starting-point of our acquaintance with the periodicity of the phenomenon; thence he proceeded with Bonpland to Caracas; and in February 1800 he left the coast for the purpose of exploring the course of the Orinoco. This trip, which lasted four months, and covered 1725 m. of wild and uninhabited country, had the important result of establishing the existence of a communication between the water-systems of the Orinoco and Amazon, and of determining the exact position of the bifurcation. On the 24th of November the two friends set sail for Cuba, and after a stay of some months regained the mainland at Cartagena. Ascending the swollen stream of the Magdalena, and crossing the frozen ridges of the Cordilleras, they reached Quito after a tedious and difficult journey on the 6th of January 1802. Their stay there was signalized by the ascent of Pichincha and Chimborazo, and terminated in an expedition to the sources of the Amazonen routefor Lima. At Callao Humboldt observed the transit of Mercury on the 9th of November, and studied the fertilizing properties of guano, the introduction of which into Europe was mainly due to his writings. A tempestuous sea-voyage brought them to the shores of Mexico, and after a year’s residence in that province, followed by a short visit to the United States, they set sail for Europe from the mouth of the Delaware, and landed at Bordeaux on the 3rd of August 1804.
Humboldt may justly be regarded as having in this memorable expedition laid the foundation in their larger bearings of the sciences of physical geography and meteorology. By his delineation (in 1817) of “isothermal lines,” he at once suggested the idea and devised the means of comparing the climatic conditions of various countries. He first investigated the rate of decrease in mean temperature with increase of elevation above the sea-level, and afforded, by his inquiries into the origin of tropical storms, the earliest clue to the detection of the more complicated law governing atmospheric disturbances in higher latitudes; while his essay on the geography of plants was based on the then novel idea of studying the distribution of organic life as affected by varying physical conditions. His discovery of the decrease in intensity of the earth’s magnetic force from the poles to the equator was communicated to the Paris Institute in a memoir read by him on the 7th of December 1804, and its importance was attested by the speedy emergence of rival claims. His services to geology were mainly based on his attentive study of the volcanoes of the New World. He showed that they fell naturally into linear groups, presumably corresponding with vast subterranean fissures; and by his demonstration of the igneous origin of rocks previously held to be of aqueous formation, he contributed largely to the elimination of erroneous views.
The reduction into form and publication of the encyclopaedic mass of materials—scientific, political and archaeological—collected by him during his absence from Europe was now Humboldt’s most urgent desire. After a short trip to Italy with Gay-Lussac for the purpose of investigating the law of magnetic declination, and a sojourn of two years and a half in his native city, he finally, in the spring of 1808, settled in Paris with the purpose of securing the scientific co-operation required for bringing his great work through the press. This colossal task, which he at first hoped would have occupied but two years, eventually cost him twenty-one, and even then remained incomplete. With the exception of Napoleon Bonaparte, he was the most famous man in Europe. A chorus of applause greeted him from every side. Academies, both native and foreign, were eager to enrol him among their members. Frederick William III. of Prussia conferred upon him the honour, without exacting the duties, attached to the post of royal chamberlain, together with a pension of 2500 thalers, afterwards doubled. He refused the appointment of Prussian minister of public instruction in 1810. In 1814 he accompanied the allied sovereigns to London. Three years later he was summoned by the king of Prussia to attend him at the congress of Aix-la-Chapelle. Again in the autumn of 1822 he accompanied the same monarch to the congress of Verona, proceeded thence with the royal party to Rome and Naples, and returned to Paris in the spring of 1823.
The French capital he had long regarded as his true home. There he found, not only scientific sympathy, but the social stimulus which his vigorous and healthy mind eagerly craved. He was equally in his element as the lion of thesalonsand as thesavantof the institute and the observatory. Thus, when at last he received from his sovereign a summons to join his court at Berlin, he obeyed indeed, but with deep and lasting regret. The provincialism of his native city was odious to him. He never ceased to rail against the bigotry without religion, aestheticism without culture, and philosophy without common sense, which he found dominant on the banks of the Spree. The unremitting benefits and sincere attachment of two well-meaning princes secured his gratitude, but could not appease his discontent. At first he sought relief from the “nebulous atmosphere” of his new abode by frequent visits to Paris; but as years advanced his excursions were reduced to accompanying the monotonous “oscillations” of the court between Potsdam and Berlin. On the 12th of May 1827 he settled permanently in the Prussian capital, where his first efforts were directed towards the furtherance of the science of terrestrial magnetism. For many years it had been one of his favourite schemes to secure, by means of simultaneous observations at distant points, a thorough investigation of the nature and law of “magnetic storms”—a term invented by him to designate abnormal disturbances of the earth’s magnetism. The meeting at Berlin, on the 18th of September 1828, of a newly-formed scientific association, of which he was elected president, gave him the opportunity of setting on foot an extensive system of research in combination with his diligent personal observations. His appeal to the Russian government in 1829 led to the establishment of a line of magnetic and meteorological stations across northern Asia; while his letter to the duke of Sussex, then (April 1836) president of the Royal Society, secured for the undertaking the wide basis of the British dominions. Thus that scientific conspiracy of nations which is one of the noblest fruits of modern civilization was by his exertions first successfully organized.
In 1811, and again in 1818, projects of Asiatic exploration were proposed to Humboldt, first by the Russian, and afterwards by the Prussian government; but on each occasion untoward circumstances interposed, and it was not until he had entered upon his sixtieth year that he resumed his earlyrôleof a traveller in the interests of science. Between May and November 1829 he, together with his chosen associates Gustav Rose and C. G. Ehrenberg, traversed the wide expanse of the Russian empire from the Neva to the Yenesei, accomplishing in twenty-five weeks a distance of 9614 m. The journey, however, though carried out with all the advantages afforded by the immediate patronage of the Russian government, was too rapid to be profitable. Its most important fruits were the correction of the prevalent exaggerated estimate of the height of the Central-Asian plateau, and the discovery of diamonds in the gold-washings of the Ural—a result which Humboldt’s Brazilian experiences enabled him to predict, and by predicting to secure.
Between 1830 and 1848 Humboldt was frequently employed in diplomatic missions to the court of Louis Philippe, with whom he always maintained the most cordial personal relations. The death of his brother, Wilhelm von Humboldt, who expired in his arms, on the 8th of April 1836, saddened the later years of his life. In losing him, Alexander lamented that he had “lost half himself.” The accession of the crown prince, as Frederick William IV., on the death of his father, in June 1840, added to rather than detracted from his court favour. Indeed, the new king’s craving for his society became at times so importunate as to leave him only some hours snatched from sleep for the prosecution of his literary labours.
It is not often that a man postpones to his seventy-sixth year, and then successfully executes, the crowning task of his life. Yet this was Humboldt’s case. The first two volumes of theKosmoswere published, and in the main composed, between the years 1845 and 1847. The idea of a work which shouldconvey, not only a graphic description, but an imaginative conception of the physical world—which should support generalization by details, and dignify details by generalization, had floated before his mind for upwards of half a century. It first took definite shape in a set of lectures delivered by him before the university of Berlin in the winter of 1827-1828. These lectures formed, as his latest biographer expresses it, “the cartoon for the great fresco of theKosmos.” The scope of this remarkable work may be briefly described as the representation of the unity amid the complexity of nature. In it the large and vague ideals of the 18th are sought to be combined with the exact scientific requirements of the 19th century. And, in spite of inevitable shortcomings, the attempt was in an eminent degree successful. Nevertheless, the general effect of the book is rendered to some extent unsatisfactory by its tendency to substitute the indefinite for the infinite, and thus to ignore, while it does not deny, the existence of a power outside and beyond nature. A certain heaviness of style, too, and laborious picturesqueness of treatment make it more imposing than attractive to the general reader. But its supreme and abiding value consists in its faithful reflection of the mind of a great man. No higher eulogium can be passed on Alexander von Humboldt than that, in attempting, and not unworthily attempting, to portray the universe, he succeeded still more perfectly in portraying his own comprehensive intelligence.
The last decade of his long life—his “improbable” years, as he was accustomed to call them—was devoted to the continuation of this work, of which the third and fourth volumes were published in 1850-1858, while a fragment of a fifth appeared posthumously in 1862. In these he sought to fill up what was wanting of detail as to individual branches of science in the sweeping survey contained in the first volume. Notwithstanding their high separate value, it must be admitted that, from an artistic point of view, these additions were deformities. The characteristic idea of the work, so far as such a gigantic idea admitted of literary incorporation, was completely developed in its opening portions, and the attempt to convert it into a scientific encyclopaedia was in truth to nullify its generating motive. Humboldt’s remarkable industry and accuracy were never more conspicuous than in the erection of this latest trophy to his genius. Nor did he rely entirely on his own labours. He owed much of what he accomplished to his rare power of assimilating the thoughts and availing himself of the co-operation of others. He was not more ready to incur than to acknowledge obligations. The notes toKosmosoverflow with laudatory citations, the current coin in which he discharged his intellectual debts.
On the 24th of February 1857 Humboldt was attacked with a slight apoplectic stroke, which passed away without leaving any perceptible trace. It was not until the winter of 1858-1859 that his strength began to decline, and on the ensuing 6th of May he tranquilly expired, wanting but six months of completing his ninetieth year. The honours which had been showered on him during life followed him after death. His remains, previously to being interred in the family resting-place at Tegel, were conveyed in state through the streets of Berlin, and received by the prince-regent with uncovered head at the door of the cathedral. The first centenary of his birth was celebrated on the 14th of September 1869, with equal enthusiasm in the New and Old Worlds; and the numerous monuments erected in his honour, and newly explored regions called by his name, bear witness to the universal diffusion of his fame and popularity.
Humboldt never married, and seems to have been at all times more social than domestic in his tastes. To his brother’s family he was, however, much attached; and in his later years the somewhat arbitrary sway of an old and faithful servant held him in more than matrimonial bondage. By a singular example of weakness, he executed, four years before his death, a deed of gift transferring to this man Seifert the absolute possession of his entire property. It is right to add that no undue advantage appears to have been taken of this extraordinary concession. Of the qualities of his heart it is less easy to speak than of those of his head. The clue to his inner life might probably be found in a certain egotism of self-culture scarcely separable from the promptings of genius. Yet his attachments, once formed, were sincere and lasting. He made innumerable friends; and it does not stand on record that he ever lost one. His benevolence was throughout his life active and disinterested. His early zeal for the improvement of the condition of the miners in Galicia and Franconia, his consistent detestation of slavery, his earnest patronage of rising men of science, bear witness to the large humanity which formed the ground-work of his character. The faults of his old age have been brought into undue prominence by the injudicious publication of his letters to Varnhagen von Ense. The chief of these was his habit of smooth speaking, almost amounting to flattery, which formed a painful contrast with the caustic sarcasm of his confidential utterances. His vanity, at all times conspicuous, was tempered by his sense of humour, and was so frankly avowed as to invite sympathy rather than provoke ridicule. After every deduction has been made, he yet stands before us as a colossal figure, not unworthy to take his place beside Goethe as the representative of the scientific side of the culture of his country.
The best biography of Humboldt is that of Professor Karl Bruhns (3 vols., 8vo, Leipzig, 1872), translated into English by the Misses Lassell in 1873. Brief accounts of his career are given by A. Dove inAllgemeine deutsche Biographie, and by S. Günther inAlexander von Humboldt(Berlin, 1900). TheVoyage aux régions équinoxiales du Nouveau Continent, fait en 1799-1804, par Alexandre de Humboldt et Aimé Bonpland(Paris, 1807, &c.), consisted of thirty folio and quarto volumes, and comprised a considerable number of subordinate but important works. Among these may be enumeratedVue des Cordillères et monuments des peuples indigènes de l’Amérique(2 vols. folio, 1810);Examen critique de l’histoire de la géographie du Nouveau Continent(1814-1834);Atlas géographique et physique du royaume de la Nouvelle Espagne(1811);Essai politique sur le royaume de la Nouvelle Espagne(1811);Essai sur la géographie des plantes(1805, now very rare); andRelation historique(1814-1825), an unfinished narrative of his travels, including theEssai politique sur l’île de Cuba. TheNova genera et species plantarum(7 vols. folio, 1815-1825), containing descriptions of above 4500 species of plants collected by Humboldt and Bonpland, was mainly compiled by C. S. Kunth; J. Oltmanns assisted in preparing theRecueil d’observations astronomiques(1808); Cuvier, Latreille, Valenciennes and Gay-Lussac cooperated in theRecueil d’observations de zoologie et d’anatomie comparée(1805-1833), Humboldt’sAnsichten der Natur(Stuttgart and Tübingen, 1808) went through three editions in his lifetime, and was translated into nearly every European language. The results of his Asiatic journey were published inFragments de géologie et de climatologie asiatiques(2 vols. 8vo, 1831), and inAsie centrale(3 vols. 8vo, 1843)—an enlargement of the earlier work. The memoirs and papers read by him before scientific societies, or contributed by him to scientific periodicals, are too numerous for specification.Since his death considerable portions of his correspondence have been made public. The first of these, in order both of time and of importance, is hisBriefe an Varnhagen von Ense(Leipzig, 1860). This was followed in rapid succession byBriefwechsel mit einem jungen Freunde(Friedrich Althaus, Berlin, 1861);Briefwechsel mit Heinrich Berghaus(3 vols., Jena, 1863);Correspondance scientifique et littéraire(2 vols., Paris, 1865-1869); “Lettres à Marc-Aug. Pictet,” published inLe Globe, tome vii. (Geneva, 1868);Briefe an Bunsen(Leipzig, 1869);Briefe zwischen Humboldt und Gauss(1877);Briefe an seinen Bruder Wilhelm(Stuttgart, 1880);Jugendbriefe an W. G. Wegener(Leipzig, 1896); besides some other collections of less note. An octavio edition of Humboldt’s principal works was published in Paris by Th. Morgand (1864-1866). See also Karl von Baer,Bulletin de l’acad. des sciences de St-Pétersbourg, xvii. 529 (1859); R. Murchison,Proceedings, Geog. Society of London, vi. (1859); L. Agassiz,American Jour. of Science, xxviii. 96 (1859);Proc. Roy. Society, X. xxxix.; A. Quetelet,Annuaire de l’acad. des sciences(Brussels, 1860), p. 97; J. Mädler,Geschichte der Himmelskunde, ii. 113; J. C. Houzeau,Bibl. astronomique, ii. 168.
The best biography of Humboldt is that of Professor Karl Bruhns (3 vols., 8vo, Leipzig, 1872), translated into English by the Misses Lassell in 1873. Brief accounts of his career are given by A. Dove inAllgemeine deutsche Biographie, and by S. Günther inAlexander von Humboldt(Berlin, 1900). TheVoyage aux régions équinoxiales du Nouveau Continent, fait en 1799-1804, par Alexandre de Humboldt et Aimé Bonpland(Paris, 1807, &c.), consisted of thirty folio and quarto volumes, and comprised a considerable number of subordinate but important works. Among these may be enumeratedVue des Cordillères et monuments des peuples indigènes de l’Amérique(2 vols. folio, 1810);Examen critique de l’histoire de la géographie du Nouveau Continent(1814-1834);Atlas géographique et physique du royaume de la Nouvelle Espagne(1811);Essai politique sur le royaume de la Nouvelle Espagne(1811);Essai sur la géographie des plantes(1805, now very rare); andRelation historique(1814-1825), an unfinished narrative of his travels, including theEssai politique sur l’île de Cuba. TheNova genera et species plantarum(7 vols. folio, 1815-1825), containing descriptions of above 4500 species of plants collected by Humboldt and Bonpland, was mainly compiled by C. S. Kunth; J. Oltmanns assisted in preparing theRecueil d’observations astronomiques(1808); Cuvier, Latreille, Valenciennes and Gay-Lussac cooperated in theRecueil d’observations de zoologie et d’anatomie comparée(1805-1833), Humboldt’sAnsichten der Natur(Stuttgart and Tübingen, 1808) went through three editions in his lifetime, and was translated into nearly every European language. The results of his Asiatic journey were published inFragments de géologie et de climatologie asiatiques(2 vols. 8vo, 1831), and inAsie centrale(3 vols. 8vo, 1843)—an enlargement of the earlier work. The memoirs and papers read by him before scientific societies, or contributed by him to scientific periodicals, are too numerous for specification.
Since his death considerable portions of his correspondence have been made public. The first of these, in order both of time and of importance, is hisBriefe an Varnhagen von Ense(Leipzig, 1860). This was followed in rapid succession byBriefwechsel mit einem jungen Freunde(Friedrich Althaus, Berlin, 1861);Briefwechsel mit Heinrich Berghaus(3 vols., Jena, 1863);Correspondance scientifique et littéraire(2 vols., Paris, 1865-1869); “Lettres à Marc-Aug. Pictet,” published inLe Globe, tome vii. (Geneva, 1868);Briefe an Bunsen(Leipzig, 1869);Briefe zwischen Humboldt und Gauss(1877);Briefe an seinen Bruder Wilhelm(Stuttgart, 1880);Jugendbriefe an W. G. Wegener(Leipzig, 1896); besides some other collections of less note. An octavio edition of Humboldt’s principal works was published in Paris by Th. Morgand (1864-1866). See also Karl von Baer,Bulletin de l’acad. des sciences de St-Pétersbourg, xvii. 529 (1859); R. Murchison,Proceedings, Geog. Society of London, vi. (1859); L. Agassiz,American Jour. of Science, xxviii. 96 (1859);Proc. Roy. Society, X. xxxix.; A. Quetelet,Annuaire de l’acad. des sciences(Brussels, 1860), p. 97; J. Mädler,Geschichte der Himmelskunde, ii. 113; J. C. Houzeau,Bibl. astronomique, ii. 168.
(A. M. C.)
HUMBOLDT, KARL WILHELM VON(1767-1835), German philologist and man of letters, the elder brother of the more celebrated Alexander von Humboldt, was born at Potsdam, on the 22nd of June 1767. After being educated at Berlin, Göttingen and Jena, in the last of which places he formed a close and lifelong friendship with Schiller, he married Fräulein von Dacherode, a lady of birth and fortune, and in 1802 was appointed by the Prussian government first resident and then minister plenipotentiary at Rome. While there he published a poem entitledRom, which was reprinted in 1824. This was not, however, the first of his literary productions; his critical essay on Goethe’sHermann und Dorothea, published in 1800, had already placed him in the first rank of authorities on aesthetics, and, together with his family connexions, had much to do with his appointment at Rome; while in the years 1795 and 1797 he had brought out translations of several of the odes of Pindar, which were held in high esteem. On quitting his post at Rome he was made councillor of state and minister of public instruction. He soon, however, retired to his estate at Tegel, near Berlin, but was recalled and sent as ambassador to Vienna in 1812 during the exciting period which witnessed the closing struggles of the French empire. In the following year, as Prussian plenipotentiary at the congress of Prague, he was mainly instrumental in inducing Austria to unite with Prussia and Russia against France; in 1815 he was one of the signatories of the capitulation of Paris, and the same year was occupied in drawing up the treaty between Prussia and Saxony, by which the territory of the former was largely increased at the expense of the latter. The next year he was at Frankfort settling the future condition of Germany, but was summoned to London in the midst of his work, and in 1818 had to attend the congress at Aix-la-Chapelle. The reactionary policy of the Prussian government made him resign his office of privy councillor and give up political life in 1819; and from that time forward he devoted himself solely to literature and study.
During the busiest portion of his political career, however, he had found time for literary work. Thus in 1816 he had published a translation of theAgamemnonof Aeschylus, and in 1817 corrections and additions to Adelung’sMithridates, that famous collection of specimens of the various languages and dialects of the world. Among these additions that on the Basque language is the longest and most important, Basque having for some time specially attracted his attention. In fact, Wilhelm von Humboldt may be said to have been the first who brought Basque before the notice of European philologists, and made a scientific study of it possible. In order to gain a practical knowledge of the language and complete his investigations into it, he visited the Basque country itself, the result of his visit being the valuable “Researches into the Early Inhabitants of Spain by the help of the Basque language” (Prüfung der Untersuchungen über die Urbewohner Hispaniens vermittelst der vaskischen Sprache), published in 1821. In this work he endeavoured to show, by an examination of geographical names, that a race or races speaking dialects allied to modern Basque once extended through the whole of Spain, the southern coast of France and the Balearic Islands, and suggested that these people, whom he identified with the Iberians of classical writers, had come from northern Africa, where the name of Berber still perhaps perpetuates their old designation. Another work on what has sometimes been termed the metaphysics of language appeared from his pen in 1828, under the title ofÜber den Dualis; but the great work of his life, on the ancient Kawi language of Java, was unfortunately interrupted by his death on the 8th of April 1835. The imperfect fragment was edited by his brother and Dr Buschmann in 1836, and contains the remarkable introduction on “The Heterogeneity of Language and its Influence on the Intellectual Development of Mankind” (Über die Verschiedenheit des menschlichen Sprachbaues und ihren Einfluss auf die geistige Entwickelung des Menschengeschlechts), which was afterwards edited and defended against Steinthal’s criticisms by Pott (2 vols., 1876). This essay, which has been called the text-book of the philosophy of speech, first clearly laid down that the character and structure of a language expresses the inner life and knowledge of its speakers, and that languages must differ from one another in the same way and to the same degree as those who use them. Sounds do not become words until a meaning has been put into them, and this meaning embodies the thought of a community. What Humboldt terms the inner form of a language is just that mode of denoting the relations between the parts of a sentence which reflects the manner in which a particular body of men regards the world about them. It is the task of the morphology of speech to distinguish the various ways in which languages differ from each other as regards their inner form, and to classify and arrange them accordingly. Other linguistic publications of Humboldt, which had appeared in theTransactionsof the Berlin Academy, theJournalof the Royal Asiatic Society, or elsewhere, were republished by his brother in the seven volumes of Wilhelm von Humboldt’sGesammelte Werke(1841-1852). These volumes also contain poems, essays on aesthetical subjects and other creations of his prolific mind. Perhaps, however, the most generally interesting of his works, outside those which deal with language, is his correspondence with Schiller, published in 1830. Both poet and philosopher come before us in it in their most genial mood. For, though Humboldt was primarily a philosopher, he was a philosopher rendered practical by his knowledge of statesmanship and wide experience of life, and endowed with keen sympathies, warm imagination and active interest in the method of scientific inquiry.