The latter years of Huxley’s life were mainly occupied with contributions to periodical literature on subjects connected with philosophy and theology. The effect produced by these on popular opinion was profound. This was partly due to his position as a man of science, partly to his obvious earnestness and sincerity, but in the main to his strenuous and attractive method of exposition. Such studies were not wholly new to him, as they had more or less engaged his thoughts from his earliest days. That his views exhibit some process of development and are not wholly consistent was, therefore, to be expected, and for this reason it is not easy to summarize them as a connected body of teaching. They may be found perhaps in their most systematic form in the volume onHumepublished in 1879.Huxley’s general attitude to the problems of theology and philosophy was technically that of scepticism. “I am,” he wrote, “too much of a sceptic to deny the possibility of anything” (Life, ii. 127). “Doubt is a beneficent demon” (Essays, ix. 56). He was anxious, nevertheless, to avoid the accusation of Pyrrhonism (Life, ii. 280), but the Agnosticism which he defined to express his position in 1869 suggests the PyrrhonistAphasia. The only approach to certainty which he admitted lay in the order of nature. “The conception of the constancy of the order of nature has become the dominant idea of modern thought.... Whatever may be man’s speculative doctrines, it is quite certain that every intelligent person guides his life and risks his fortune upon the belief that the order of nature is constant, and that the chain of natural causation is never broken.” He adds, however, that “it by no means necessarily follows that we are justified in expanding this generalization into the infinite past” (Essays, iv. 47, 48). This was little more than a piousreservation, as evolution implies the principle of continuity (l.c. p. 55). Later he stated his belief even more absolutely: “If there is anything in the world which I do firmly believe in, it is the universal validity of the law of causation, but that universality cannot be proved by any amount of experience” (Essays, ix. 121). The assertion that “There is only one method by which intellectual truth can be reached, whether the subject-matter of investigation belongs to the world of physics or to the world of consciousness” (Essays, ix. 126) laid him open to the charge of materialism, which he vigorously repelled. His defence, when he rested it on the imperfection of the physical analysis of matter and force (l.c.p. 131), was irrelevant; he was on sounder ground when he contended with Berkeley “that our certain knowledge does not extend beyond our states of consciousness” (l.c.p. 130). “Legitimate materialism, that is, the extension of the conceptions and of the methods of physical science to the highest as well as to the lowest phenomena of vitality, is neither more nor less than a sort of shorthand idealism” (Essays, i. 194). While “the substance of matter is a metaphysical unknown quality of the existence of which there is no proof ... the non-existence of a substance of mind is equally arguable; ... the result ... is the reduction of the All to co-existences and sequences of phenomena beneath and beyond which there is nothing cognoscible” (Essays, ix. 66). Hume had defined a miracle as a “violation of the laws of nature.” Huxley refused to accept this. While, on the one hand, he insists that “the whole fabric of practical life is built upon our faith in its continuity” (Hume, p. 129), on the other “nobody can presume to say what the order of nature must be”; this “knocks the bottom out of all a priori objections either to ordinary ‘miracles’ or to the efficacy of prayer” (Essays, v. 133). “If by the term miracles we mean only extremely wonderful events, there can be no just ground for denying the possibility of their occurrence” (Hume, p. 134). Assuming the chemical elements to be aggregates of uniform primitive matter, he saw no more theoretical difficulty in water being turned into alcohol in the miracle at Cana, than in sugar undergoing a similar conversion (Essays, v. 81). The credibility of miracles with Huxley is a question of evidence. It may be remarked that a scientific explanation is destructive of the supernatural character of a miracle, and that the demand for evidence may be so framed as to preclude the credibility of any historical event. Throughout his life theology had a strong attraction, not without elements of repulsion, for Huxley. The circumstances of his early training, when Paley was the “most interesting Sunday reading allowed him when a boy” (Life, ii. 57), probably had something to do with both. In 1860 his beliefs were apparently theistic: “Science seems to me to teach in the highest and strongest manner the great truth which is embodied in the Christian conception of entire surrender to the will of God” (Life, i. 219). In 1885 he formulates “the perfect ideal of religion” in a passage which has become almost famous: “In the 8th centuryB.C.in the heart of a world of idolatrous polytheists, the Hebrew prophets put forth a conception of religion which appears to be as wonderful an inspiration of genius as the art of Pheidias or the science of Aristotle. ‘And what doth the Lord require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God’” (Essays, iv. 161). Two years later he was writing: “That there is no evidence of the existence of such a being as the God of the theologians is true enough” (Life, ii. 162). He insisted, however, that “atheism is on purely philosophical grounds untenable” (l.c.). His theism never really advanced beyond the recognition of “the passionless impersonality of the unknown and unknowable, which science shows everywhere underlying the thin veil of phenomena” (Life, i. 239). In other respects his personal creed was a kind of scientific Calvinism. There is an interesting passage in an essay written in 1892, “An Apologetic Eirenicon,” which has not been republished, which illustrates this: “It is the secret of the superiority of the best theological teachers to the majority of their opponents that they substantially recognize these realities of things, however strange the forms in which they clothe their conceptions. The doctrines of predestination, of original sin, of the innate depravity of man and the evil fate of the greater part of the race, of the primacy of Satan in this world, of the essential vileness of matter, of a malevolent Demiurgus subordinate to a benevolent Almighty, who has only lately revealed himself, faulty as they are, appear to me to be vastly nearer the truth than the ‘liberal’ popular illusions that babies are all born good, and that the example of a corrupt society is responsible for their failure to remain so; that it is given to everybody to reach the ethical ideal if he will only try; that all partial evil is universal good, and other optimistic figments, such as that which represents ‘Providence’ under the guise of a paternal philanthropist, and bids us believe that everything will come right (according to our notions) at last.” But his “slender definite creed,” R. H. Hutton, who was associated with him in the Metaphysical Society, thought—and no doubt rightly—in no respect “represented the cravings of his larger nature.”From 1880 onwards till the very end of his life, Huxley was continuously occupied in a controversial campaign against orthodox beliefs. As Professor W. F. R. Weldon justly said of his earlier polemics: “They were certainly among the principal agents in winning a larger measure of toleration for the critical examination of fundamental beliefs, and for the free expression of honest reverent doubt.” He threw Christianity overboard bodily and with little appreciation of its historic effect as a civilizing agency. He thought that “the exact nature of the teachings and the convictions of Jesus is extremely uncertain” (Essays, v. 348). “What we are usually pleased to call religion nowadays is, for the most part, Hellenized Judaism” (Essays, iv. 162). His final analysis of what “since the second century, has assumed to itself the title of Orthodox Christianity” is a “varying compound of some of the best and some of the worst elements of Paganism and Judaism, moulded in practice by the innate character of certain people of the Western world” (Essays, v. 142). He concludes “That this Christianity is doomed to fall is, to my mind, beyond a doubt; but its fall will neither be sudden nor speedy” (l.c.). He did not omit, however, to do justice to “the bright side of Christianity,” and was deeply impressed with the life of Catherine of Siena. Failing Christianity, he thought that some other “hypostasis of men’s hopes” will arise (Essays, v. 254). His latest speculations on ethical problems are perhaps the least satisfactory of his writings. In 1892 he wrote: “The moral sense is a very complex affair—dependent in part upon associations of pleasure and pain, approbation and disapprobation, formed by education in early youth, but in part also on an innate sense of moral beauty and ugliness (how originated need not be discussed), which is possessed by some people in great strength, while some are totally devoid of it” (Life, ii. 305). This is an intuitional theory, and he compares the moral with the aesthetic sense, which he repeatedly declares to be intuitive; thus: “All the understanding in the world will neither increase nor diminish the force of the intuition that this is beautiful and this is ugly” (Essays, ix. 80). In the Romanes Lecture delivered in 1894, in which this passage occurs, he defines “law and morals” to be “restraints upon the struggle for existence between men in society.” It follows that “the ethical process is in opposition to the cosmic process,” to which the struggle for existence belongs (Essays, ix. 31). Apparently he thought that the moral sense in its origin was intuitional and in its development utilitarian. “Morality commenced with society” (Essays, v. 52). The “ethical process” is the “gradual strengthening of the social bond” (Essays, ix. 35). “The cosmic process has no sort of relation to moral ends” (l.c.p. 83); “of moral purpose I see no trace in nature. That is an article of exclusive human manufacture” (Life, ii. 268). The cosmic process Huxley identified with evil, and the ethical process with good; the two are in necessary conflict. “The reality at the bottom of the doctrine of original sin” is the “innate tendency to self-assertion” inherited by man from the cosmic order (Essays, ix. 27). “The actions we call sinful are part and parcel of the struggle for existence” (Life, ii. 282). “The prospect of attaining untroubled happiness” is “an illusion” (Essays, ix. 44), and the cosmic process in the long run will get the best of the contest, and “resume its sway” when evolution enters on its downward course (l.c.p. 45). This approaches pure pessimism, and though in Huxley’s view the “pessimism of Schopenhauer is a nightmare” (Essays, ix. 200), his own philosophy of life is not distinguishable, and is often expressed in the same language. The cosmic order is obviously non-moral (Essays, ix. 197). That it is, as has been said, immoral is really meaningless. Pain and suffering are affections which imply a complex nervous organization, and we are not justified in projecting them into nature external to ourselves. Darwin and A. R. Wallace disagreed with Huxley in seeing rather the joyous than the suffering side of nature. Nor can it be assumed that the descending scale of evolution will reproduce the ascent, or that man will ever be conscious of his doom.As has been said, Huxley never thoroughly grasped the Darwinian principle. He thought “transmutation may take place without transition” (Life, i. 173). In other words, that evolution is accomplished by leaps and not by the accumulation of small variations. He recognized the “struggle for existence” but not the gradual adjustment of the organism to its environment which is implied in “natural selection.” In highly civilized societies he thought that the former was at an end (Essays, ix. 36) and had been replaced by the “struggle for enjoyment” (l.c.p. 40). But a consideration of the stationary population of France might have shown him that the effect in the one case may be as restrictive as in the other. So far from natural selection being in abeyance under modern social conditions, “it is,” as Professor Karl Pearson points out, “something we run up against at once, almost as soon as we examine a mortality table” (Biometrika, i. 76). The inevitable conclusion, whether we like it or not, is that the future evolution of humanity is as much a part of the cosmic process as its past history, and Huxley’s attempt to shut the door on it cannot be maintained scientifically.Authorities.—Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley, by his son Leonard Huxley (2 vols., 1900);Scientific Memoirs of T. H. Huxley(4 vols., 1898-1901);Collected Essaysby T. H. Huxley (9 vols., 1898);Thomas Henry Huxley, a Sketch of his Life and Work, by P. Chalmers Mitchell, M.A. (Oxon., 1900); a critical study founded on careful research and of great value.
The latter years of Huxley’s life were mainly occupied with contributions to periodical literature on subjects connected with philosophy and theology. The effect produced by these on popular opinion was profound. This was partly due to his position as a man of science, partly to his obvious earnestness and sincerity, but in the main to his strenuous and attractive method of exposition. Such studies were not wholly new to him, as they had more or less engaged his thoughts from his earliest days. That his views exhibit some process of development and are not wholly consistent was, therefore, to be expected, and for this reason it is not easy to summarize them as a connected body of teaching. They may be found perhaps in their most systematic form in the volume onHumepublished in 1879.
Huxley’s general attitude to the problems of theology and philosophy was technically that of scepticism. “I am,” he wrote, “too much of a sceptic to deny the possibility of anything” (Life, ii. 127). “Doubt is a beneficent demon” (Essays, ix. 56). He was anxious, nevertheless, to avoid the accusation of Pyrrhonism (Life, ii. 280), but the Agnosticism which he defined to express his position in 1869 suggests the PyrrhonistAphasia. The only approach to certainty which he admitted lay in the order of nature. “The conception of the constancy of the order of nature has become the dominant idea of modern thought.... Whatever may be man’s speculative doctrines, it is quite certain that every intelligent person guides his life and risks his fortune upon the belief that the order of nature is constant, and that the chain of natural causation is never broken.” He adds, however, that “it by no means necessarily follows that we are justified in expanding this generalization into the infinite past” (Essays, iv. 47, 48). This was little more than a piousreservation, as evolution implies the principle of continuity (l.c. p. 55). Later he stated his belief even more absolutely: “If there is anything in the world which I do firmly believe in, it is the universal validity of the law of causation, but that universality cannot be proved by any amount of experience” (Essays, ix. 121). The assertion that “There is only one method by which intellectual truth can be reached, whether the subject-matter of investigation belongs to the world of physics or to the world of consciousness” (Essays, ix. 126) laid him open to the charge of materialism, which he vigorously repelled. His defence, when he rested it on the imperfection of the physical analysis of matter and force (l.c.p. 131), was irrelevant; he was on sounder ground when he contended with Berkeley “that our certain knowledge does not extend beyond our states of consciousness” (l.c.p. 130). “Legitimate materialism, that is, the extension of the conceptions and of the methods of physical science to the highest as well as to the lowest phenomena of vitality, is neither more nor less than a sort of shorthand idealism” (Essays, i. 194). While “the substance of matter is a metaphysical unknown quality of the existence of which there is no proof ... the non-existence of a substance of mind is equally arguable; ... the result ... is the reduction of the All to co-existences and sequences of phenomena beneath and beyond which there is nothing cognoscible” (Essays, ix. 66). Hume had defined a miracle as a “violation of the laws of nature.” Huxley refused to accept this. While, on the one hand, he insists that “the whole fabric of practical life is built upon our faith in its continuity” (Hume, p. 129), on the other “nobody can presume to say what the order of nature must be”; this “knocks the bottom out of all a priori objections either to ordinary ‘miracles’ or to the efficacy of prayer” (Essays, v. 133). “If by the term miracles we mean only extremely wonderful events, there can be no just ground for denying the possibility of their occurrence” (Hume, p. 134). Assuming the chemical elements to be aggregates of uniform primitive matter, he saw no more theoretical difficulty in water being turned into alcohol in the miracle at Cana, than in sugar undergoing a similar conversion (Essays, v. 81). The credibility of miracles with Huxley is a question of evidence. It may be remarked that a scientific explanation is destructive of the supernatural character of a miracle, and that the demand for evidence may be so framed as to preclude the credibility of any historical event. Throughout his life theology had a strong attraction, not without elements of repulsion, for Huxley. The circumstances of his early training, when Paley was the “most interesting Sunday reading allowed him when a boy” (Life, ii. 57), probably had something to do with both. In 1860 his beliefs were apparently theistic: “Science seems to me to teach in the highest and strongest manner the great truth which is embodied in the Christian conception of entire surrender to the will of God” (Life, i. 219). In 1885 he formulates “the perfect ideal of religion” in a passage which has become almost famous: “In the 8th centuryB.C.in the heart of a world of idolatrous polytheists, the Hebrew prophets put forth a conception of religion which appears to be as wonderful an inspiration of genius as the art of Pheidias or the science of Aristotle. ‘And what doth the Lord require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God’” (Essays, iv. 161). Two years later he was writing: “That there is no evidence of the existence of such a being as the God of the theologians is true enough” (Life, ii. 162). He insisted, however, that “atheism is on purely philosophical grounds untenable” (l.c.). His theism never really advanced beyond the recognition of “the passionless impersonality of the unknown and unknowable, which science shows everywhere underlying the thin veil of phenomena” (Life, i. 239). In other respects his personal creed was a kind of scientific Calvinism. There is an interesting passage in an essay written in 1892, “An Apologetic Eirenicon,” which has not been republished, which illustrates this: “It is the secret of the superiority of the best theological teachers to the majority of their opponents that they substantially recognize these realities of things, however strange the forms in which they clothe their conceptions. The doctrines of predestination, of original sin, of the innate depravity of man and the evil fate of the greater part of the race, of the primacy of Satan in this world, of the essential vileness of matter, of a malevolent Demiurgus subordinate to a benevolent Almighty, who has only lately revealed himself, faulty as they are, appear to me to be vastly nearer the truth than the ‘liberal’ popular illusions that babies are all born good, and that the example of a corrupt society is responsible for their failure to remain so; that it is given to everybody to reach the ethical ideal if he will only try; that all partial evil is universal good, and other optimistic figments, such as that which represents ‘Providence’ under the guise of a paternal philanthropist, and bids us believe that everything will come right (according to our notions) at last.” But his “slender definite creed,” R. H. Hutton, who was associated with him in the Metaphysical Society, thought—and no doubt rightly—in no respect “represented the cravings of his larger nature.”
From 1880 onwards till the very end of his life, Huxley was continuously occupied in a controversial campaign against orthodox beliefs. As Professor W. F. R. Weldon justly said of his earlier polemics: “They were certainly among the principal agents in winning a larger measure of toleration for the critical examination of fundamental beliefs, and for the free expression of honest reverent doubt.” He threw Christianity overboard bodily and with little appreciation of its historic effect as a civilizing agency. He thought that “the exact nature of the teachings and the convictions of Jesus is extremely uncertain” (Essays, v. 348). “What we are usually pleased to call religion nowadays is, for the most part, Hellenized Judaism” (Essays, iv. 162). His final analysis of what “since the second century, has assumed to itself the title of Orthodox Christianity” is a “varying compound of some of the best and some of the worst elements of Paganism and Judaism, moulded in practice by the innate character of certain people of the Western world” (Essays, v. 142). He concludes “That this Christianity is doomed to fall is, to my mind, beyond a doubt; but its fall will neither be sudden nor speedy” (l.c.). He did not omit, however, to do justice to “the bright side of Christianity,” and was deeply impressed with the life of Catherine of Siena. Failing Christianity, he thought that some other “hypostasis of men’s hopes” will arise (Essays, v. 254). His latest speculations on ethical problems are perhaps the least satisfactory of his writings. In 1892 he wrote: “The moral sense is a very complex affair—dependent in part upon associations of pleasure and pain, approbation and disapprobation, formed by education in early youth, but in part also on an innate sense of moral beauty and ugliness (how originated need not be discussed), which is possessed by some people in great strength, while some are totally devoid of it” (Life, ii. 305). This is an intuitional theory, and he compares the moral with the aesthetic sense, which he repeatedly declares to be intuitive; thus: “All the understanding in the world will neither increase nor diminish the force of the intuition that this is beautiful and this is ugly” (Essays, ix. 80). In the Romanes Lecture delivered in 1894, in which this passage occurs, he defines “law and morals” to be “restraints upon the struggle for existence between men in society.” It follows that “the ethical process is in opposition to the cosmic process,” to which the struggle for existence belongs (Essays, ix. 31). Apparently he thought that the moral sense in its origin was intuitional and in its development utilitarian. “Morality commenced with society” (Essays, v. 52). The “ethical process” is the “gradual strengthening of the social bond” (Essays, ix. 35). “The cosmic process has no sort of relation to moral ends” (l.c.p. 83); “of moral purpose I see no trace in nature. That is an article of exclusive human manufacture” (Life, ii. 268). The cosmic process Huxley identified with evil, and the ethical process with good; the two are in necessary conflict. “The reality at the bottom of the doctrine of original sin” is the “innate tendency to self-assertion” inherited by man from the cosmic order (Essays, ix. 27). “The actions we call sinful are part and parcel of the struggle for existence” (Life, ii. 282). “The prospect of attaining untroubled happiness” is “an illusion” (Essays, ix. 44), and the cosmic process in the long run will get the best of the contest, and “resume its sway” when evolution enters on its downward course (l.c.p. 45). This approaches pure pessimism, and though in Huxley’s view the “pessimism of Schopenhauer is a nightmare” (Essays, ix. 200), his own philosophy of life is not distinguishable, and is often expressed in the same language. The cosmic order is obviously non-moral (Essays, ix. 197). That it is, as has been said, immoral is really meaningless. Pain and suffering are affections which imply a complex nervous organization, and we are not justified in projecting them into nature external to ourselves. Darwin and A. R. Wallace disagreed with Huxley in seeing rather the joyous than the suffering side of nature. Nor can it be assumed that the descending scale of evolution will reproduce the ascent, or that man will ever be conscious of his doom.
As has been said, Huxley never thoroughly grasped the Darwinian principle. He thought “transmutation may take place without transition” (Life, i. 173). In other words, that evolution is accomplished by leaps and not by the accumulation of small variations. He recognized the “struggle for existence” but not the gradual adjustment of the organism to its environment which is implied in “natural selection.” In highly civilized societies he thought that the former was at an end (Essays, ix. 36) and had been replaced by the “struggle for enjoyment” (l.c.p. 40). But a consideration of the stationary population of France might have shown him that the effect in the one case may be as restrictive as in the other. So far from natural selection being in abeyance under modern social conditions, “it is,” as Professor Karl Pearson points out, “something we run up against at once, almost as soon as we examine a mortality table” (Biometrika, i. 76). The inevitable conclusion, whether we like it or not, is that the future evolution of humanity is as much a part of the cosmic process as its past history, and Huxley’s attempt to shut the door on it cannot be maintained scientifically.
Authorities.—Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley, by his son Leonard Huxley (2 vols., 1900);Scientific Memoirs of T. H. Huxley(4 vols., 1898-1901);Collected Essaysby T. H. Huxley (9 vols., 1898);Thomas Henry Huxley, a Sketch of his Life and Work, by P. Chalmers Mitchell, M.A. (Oxon., 1900); a critical study founded on careful research and of great value.
(W. T. T.-D.)
1Nature, lxiii. 127.
1Nature, lxiii. 127.
HUY(Lat.Hoium, and Flem.Hoey), a town of Belgium, on the right bank of the Meuse, at the point where it is joined by the Hoyoux. Pop. (1904), 14,164. It is 19 m. E. of Namur and a trifle less west of Liége. Huy certainly dates from the 7th century, and, according to some, was founded by the emperorAntoninus inA.D.148. Its situation is striking, with its grey citadel crowning a grey rock, and the fine collegiate church (with a 13th-century gateway) of Notre Dame built against it. The citadel is now used partly as a depot of military equipment and partly as a prison. The ruins are still shown of the abbey of Neumoustier founded by Peter the Hermit on his return from the first crusade. He was buried there in 1115, and a statue was erected to his memory in the abbey grounds in 1858. Neumoustier was one of seventeen abbeys in this town alone dependent on the bishopric of Liége. Huy is surrounded by vineyards, and the bridge which crosses the Meuse at this point connects the fertile Hesbaye north of the river with the rocky and barren Condroz south of it.
HUYGENS, CHRISTIAAN(1629-1695), Dutch mathematician, mechanician, astronomer and physicist, was born at the Hague on the 14th of April 1629. He was the second son of Sir Constantijn Huygens. From his father he received the rudiments of his education, which was continued at Leiden under A. Vinnius and F. van Schooten, and completed in the juridical school of Breda. His mathematical bent, however, soon diverted him from legal studies, and the perusal of some of his earliest theorems enabled Descartes to predict his future greatness. In 1649 he accompanied the mission of Henry, count of Nassau, to Denmark, and in 1651 entered the lists of science as an assailant of the unsound system of quadratures adopted by Gregory of St Vincent. This first essay (Exetasis quadraturae circuli, Leiden, 1651) was quickly succeeded by hisTheoremata de quadratura hyperboles, ellipsis, et circuli; while, in a treatise entitledDe circuli magnitudine inventa, he made, three years later, the closest approximation so far obtained to the ratio of the circumference to the diameter of a circle.
Another class of subjects was now to engage his attention. The improvement of the telescope was justly regarded as asine qua nonfor the advancement of astronomical knowledge. But the difficulties interposed by spherical and chromatic aberration had arrested progress in that direction until, in 1655, Huygens, working with his brother Constantijn, hit upon a new method of grinding and polishing lenses. The immediate results of the clearer definition obtained were the detection of a satellite to Saturn (the sixth in order of distance from its primary), and the resolution into their true form of the abnormal appendages to that planet. Each discovery in turn was, according to the prevailing custom, announced to the learned world under the veil of an anagram—removed, in the case of the first, by the publication, early in 1656, of the little tractDe Saturni luna observatio nova; but retained, as regards the second, until 1659, when in theSystema Saturniumthe varying appearances of the so-called “triple planet” were clearly explained as the phases of a ring inclined at an angle of 28° to the ecliptic. Huygens was also in 1656 the first effective observer of the Orion nebula; he delineated the bright region still known by his name, and detected the multiple character of its nuclear star. His application of the pendulum to regulate the movement of clocks sprang from his experience of the need for an exact measure of time in observing the heavens. The invention dates from 1656; on the 16th of June 1657 Huygens presented his first “pendulum-clock” to the states-general; and theHorologium, containing a description of the requisite mechanism, was published in 1658.
His reputation now became cosmopolitan. As early as 1655 the university of Angers had distinguished him with an honorary degree of doctor of laws. In 1663, on the occasion of his second visit to England, he was elected a fellow of the Royal Society, and imparted to that body in January 1669 a clear and concise statement of the laws governing the collision of elastic bodies. Although these conclusions were arrived at independently, and, as it would seem, several years previous to their publication, they were in great measure anticipated by the communications on the same subject of John Wallis and Christopher Wren, made respectively in November and December 1668.
Huygens had before this time fixed his abode in France. In 1665 Colbert made to him on behalf of Louis XIV. an offer too tempting to be refused, and between the following year and 1681 his residence in the philosophic seclusion of the Bibliothèque du Roi was only interrupted by two short visits to his native country. Hismagnum opusdates from this period. TheHorologium oscillatorium, published with a dedication to his royal patron in 1673, contained original discoveries sufficient to have furnished materials for half a dozen striking disquisitions. His solution of the celebrated problem of the “centre of oscillation” formed in itself an important event in the history of mechanics. Assuming as an axiom that the centre of gravity of any number of interdependent bodies cannot rise higher than the point from which it fell, he arrived, by anticipating in the particular case the general principle of the conservation ofvis viva, at correct although not strictly demonstrated conclusions. His treatment of the subject was the first successful attempt to deal with the dynamics of a system. The determination of the true relation between the length of a pendulum and the time of its oscillation; the invention of the theory of evolutes; the discovery, hence ensuing, that the cycloid is its own evolute, and is strictly isochronous; the ingenious although practically inoperative idea of correcting the “circular error” of the pendulum by applying cycloidal cheeks to clocks—were all contained in this remarkable treatise. The theorems on the composition of forces in circular motion with which it concluded formed the true prelude to Newton’sPrincipia, and would alone suffice to establish the claim of Huygens to the highest rank among mechanical inventors.
In 1681 he finally severed his French connexions, and returned to Holland. The harsher measures which about that time began to be adopted towards his co-religionists in France are usually assigned as the motive of this step. He now devoted himself during six years to the production of lenses of enormous focal distance, which, mounted on high poles, and connected with the eye-piece by means of a cord, formed what were called “aerial telescopes.” Three of his object-glasses, of respectively 123, 180 and 210 ft. focal length, are in the possession of the Royal Society. He also succeeded in constructing an almost perfectly achromatic eye-piece, still known by his name. But his researches in physical optics constitute his chief title-deed to immortality. Although Robert Hooke in 1668 and Ignace Pardies in 1672 had adopted a vibratory hypothesis of light, the conception was a mere floating possibility until Huygens provided it with a sure foundation. His powerful scientific imagination enabled him to realize that all the points of a wave-front originate partial waves, the aggregate effect of which is to reconstitute the primary disturbance at the subsequent stages of its advance, thus accomplishing its propagation; so that each primary undulation is the envelope of an indefinite number of secondary undulations. This resolution of the original wave is the well-known “Principle of Huygens,” and by its means he was enabled to prove the fundamental laws of optics, and to assign the correct construction for the direction of the extraordinary ray in uniaxial crystals. These investigations, together with his discovery of the “wonderful phenomenon” of polarization, are recorded in hisTraité de la lumière, published at Leiden in 1690, but composed in 1678. In the appended treatiseSur la Cause de la pesanteur, he rejected gravitation as a universal quality of matter, although admitting the Newtonian theory of the planetary revolutions. From his views on centrifugal force he deduced the oblate figure of the earth, estimating its compression, however, at little more than one-half its actual amount.
Huygens never married. He died at the Hague on the 8th of June 1695, bequeathing his manuscripts to the university of Leiden, and his considerable property to the sons of his younger brother. In character he was as estimable as he was brilliant in intellect. Although, like most men of strong originative power, he assimilated with difficulty the ideas of others, his tardiness sprang rather from inability to depart from the track of his own methods than from reluctance to acknowledge the merits of his competitors.
In addition to the works already mentioned, hisCosmotheoros—aspeculation concerning the inhabitants of the planets—was printed posthumously at the Hague in 1698, and appeared almost simultaneously in an English translation. A volume entitledOpera posthuma(Leiden, 1703) contained his “Dioptrica,” in which the ratio between the respective focal lengths of object-glass and eye-glass is given as the measure of magnifying power, together with the shorter essaysDe vitris figurandis,De corona et parheliis, &c. An early tractDe ratiociniis in ludo aleae, printed in 1657 with Schooten’sExercitationes mathematicae, is notable as one of the first formal treatises on the theory of probabilities; nor should his investigations of the properties of the cissoid, logarithmic and catenary curves be left unnoticed. His invention of the spiral watch-spring was explained in theJournal des savants(Feb. 25, 1675). An edition of his works was published by G. J.’s Gravesande, in four quarto volumes entitledOpera varia(Leiden, 1724) andOpera reliqua(Amsterdam, 1728). His scientific correspondence was edited by P. J. Uylenbroek from manuscripts preserved at Leiden, with the titleChristiani Hugenii aliorumque seculi XVII. virorum celebrium exercitationes mathematicae et philosophicae(the Hague, 1833).The publication of a monumental edition of the letters and works of Huygens was undertaken at the Hague by theSociété Hollandaise des Sciences, with the headingŒuvres de Christian Huygens(1888), &c. Ten quarto volumes, comprising the whole of his correspondence, had already been issued in 1905. A biography of Huygens was prefixed to hisOpera varia(1724); hisÉlogein the character of a French academician was printed by J. A. N. Condorcet in 1773. Consult further: P. J. Uylenbroek,Oratio de fratribus Christiano atque Constantino Hugenio(Groningen, 1838); P. Harting,Christiaan Huygens in zijn Leven en Werken geschetzt(Groningen, 1868); J. B. J. Delambre,Hist. de l’astronomie moderne(ii. 549); J. E. Montucla,Hist. des mathématiques(ii. 84, 412, 549); M. Chasles,Aperçu historique sur l’origine des méthodes en géometrie, pp. 101-109; E. Dühring,Kritische Geschichte der allgemeinen Principien der Mechanik, Abschnitt (ii. 120, 163, iii. 227); A. Berry,A Short History of Astronomy, p. 200; R. Wolf,Geschichte der Astronomie, passim; Houzeau,Bibliographie astronomique(ii. 169); F. Kaiser,Astr. Nach.(xxv. 245, 1847);Tijdschrift voor de Wetenschappen(i. 7, 1848);Allgemeine deutsche Biographie(M. B. Cantor); J. C. Poggendorff,Biog. lit. Handwörterbuch.
In addition to the works already mentioned, hisCosmotheoros—aspeculation concerning the inhabitants of the planets—was printed posthumously at the Hague in 1698, and appeared almost simultaneously in an English translation. A volume entitledOpera posthuma(Leiden, 1703) contained his “Dioptrica,” in which the ratio between the respective focal lengths of object-glass and eye-glass is given as the measure of magnifying power, together with the shorter essaysDe vitris figurandis,De corona et parheliis, &c. An early tractDe ratiociniis in ludo aleae, printed in 1657 with Schooten’sExercitationes mathematicae, is notable as one of the first formal treatises on the theory of probabilities; nor should his investigations of the properties of the cissoid, logarithmic and catenary curves be left unnoticed. His invention of the spiral watch-spring was explained in theJournal des savants(Feb. 25, 1675). An edition of his works was published by G. J.’s Gravesande, in four quarto volumes entitledOpera varia(Leiden, 1724) andOpera reliqua(Amsterdam, 1728). His scientific correspondence was edited by P. J. Uylenbroek from manuscripts preserved at Leiden, with the titleChristiani Hugenii aliorumque seculi XVII. virorum celebrium exercitationes mathematicae et philosophicae(the Hague, 1833).
The publication of a monumental edition of the letters and works of Huygens was undertaken at the Hague by theSociété Hollandaise des Sciences, with the headingŒuvres de Christian Huygens(1888), &c. Ten quarto volumes, comprising the whole of his correspondence, had already been issued in 1905. A biography of Huygens was prefixed to hisOpera varia(1724); hisÉlogein the character of a French academician was printed by J. A. N. Condorcet in 1773. Consult further: P. J. Uylenbroek,Oratio de fratribus Christiano atque Constantino Hugenio(Groningen, 1838); P. Harting,Christiaan Huygens in zijn Leven en Werken geschetzt(Groningen, 1868); J. B. J. Delambre,Hist. de l’astronomie moderne(ii. 549); J. E. Montucla,Hist. des mathématiques(ii. 84, 412, 549); M. Chasles,Aperçu historique sur l’origine des méthodes en géometrie, pp. 101-109; E. Dühring,Kritische Geschichte der allgemeinen Principien der Mechanik, Abschnitt (ii. 120, 163, iii. 227); A. Berry,A Short History of Astronomy, p. 200; R. Wolf,Geschichte der Astronomie, passim; Houzeau,Bibliographie astronomique(ii. 169); F. Kaiser,Astr. Nach.(xxv. 245, 1847);Tijdschrift voor de Wetenschappen(i. 7, 1848);Allgemeine deutsche Biographie(M. B. Cantor); J. C. Poggendorff,Biog. lit. Handwörterbuch.
(A. M. C.)
HUYGENS, SIR CONSTANTIJN(1596-1687), Dutch poet and diplomatist, was born at the Hague on the 4th of September 1596. His father, Christiaan Huygens, was secretary to the state council, and a man of great political importance. At the baptism of the child, the city of Breda was one of his sponsors, and the admiral Justinus van Nassau the other. He was trained in every polite accomplishment, and before he was seven could speak French with fluency. He was taught Latin by Johannes Dedelus, and soon became a master of classic versification. He developed not only extraordinary intellectual gifts but great physical beauty and strength, and was one of the most accomplished athletes and gymnasts of his age; his skill in playing the lute and in the arts of painting and engraving attracted general attention before he began to develop his genius as a writer. In 1616 he proceeded, with his elder brother, to the university of Leiden. He stayed there only one year, and in 1618 went to London with the English ambassador Dudley Carleton; he remained in London for some months, and then went to Oxford, where he studied for some time in the Bodleian Library, and to Woodstock, Windsor and Cambridge; he was introduced at the English court, and played the lute before James I. The most interesting feature of this visit was the intimacy which sprang up between the young Dutch poet and Dr Donne, for whose genius Huygens preserved through life an unbounded admiration. He returned to Holland in company with the English contingent of the synod of Dort, and in 1619 he proceeded to Venice in the diplomatic service of his country; on his return he nearly lost his life by a foolhardy exploit, namely, the scaling of the topmost spire of Strassburg cathedral. In 1621 he published one of his most weighty and popular poems, hisBatava Tempe, and in the same year he proceeded again to London, as secretary to the ambassador, Wijngaerdan, but returned in three months. His third diplomatic visit to England lasted longer, from the 5th of December 1621 to the 1st of March 1623. During his absence, his volume of satires,’t Costelick Mal, dedicated to Jacob Cats, appeared at the Hague. In the autumn of 1622 he was knighted by James I. He published a large volume of miscellaneous poems in 1625 under the title ofOtiorum libri sex; and in the same year he was appointed private secretary to the stadholder. In 1627 Huygens married Susanna van Baerle, and settled at the Hague; four sons and a daughter were born to them. In 1630 Huygens was called to a seat in the privy council, and he continued to exercise political power with wisdom and vigour for many years, under the title of the lord of Zuylichem. In 1634 he is supposed to have completed his long-talked-of version of the poems of Donne, fragments of which exist. In 1637 his wife died, and he immediately began to celebrate the virtues and pleasures of their married life in the remarkable didactic poem calledDagwerck, which was not published till long afterwards. From 1639 to 1641 he occupied himself by building a magnificent house and garden outside the Hague, and by celebrating their beauties in a poem entitledHofwijck, which was published in 1653. In 1647 he wrote his beautiful poem ofOogentroostor “Eye Consolation,” to gratify his blind friend Lucretia van Trollo. He made his solitary effort in the dramatic line in 1657, when he brought out his comedy ofTrijntje Cornelis Klacht, which deals, in rather broad humour, with the adventures of the wife of a ship’s captain at Zaandam. In 1658 he rearranged his poems, and issued them with many additions, under the title ofCorn Flowers. He proposed to the government that the present highway from the Hague to the sea at Scheveningen should be constructed, and during his absence on a diplomatic mission to the French court in 1666 the road was made as a compliment to the venerable statesman, who expressed his gratitude in a descriptive poem entitledZeestraet. Huygens edited his poems for the last time in 1672, and died in his ninety-first year, on the 28th of March 1687. He was buried, with the pomp of a national funeral, in the church of St Jacob, on the 4th of April. His second son, Christiaan, the eminent astronomer, is noticed separately.
Constantijn Huygens is the most brilliant figure in Dutch literary history. Other statesmen surpassed him in political influence, and at least two other poets surpassed him in the value and originality of their writings. But his figure was more dignified and splendid, his talents were more varied, and his general accomplishments more remarkable than those of any other person of his age, the greatest age in the history of the Netherlands. Huygens is thegrand seigneurof the republic, the type of aristocratic oligarchy, the jewel and ornament of Dutch liberty. When we consider his imposing character and the positive value of his writings, we may well be surprised that he has not found a modern editor. It is a disgrace to Dutch scholarship that no complete collection of the writings of Huygens exists. His autobiography,De vita propria sermonum libri duo, did not see the light until 1817, and his remarkable poem,Cluyswerck, was not printed until 1841. As a poet Huygens shows a finer sense of form than any other early Dutch writer; the language, in his hands, becomes as flexible as Italian. His epistles and lighter pieces, in particular, display his metrical ease and facility to perfection.
Constantijn Huygens is the most brilliant figure in Dutch literary history. Other statesmen surpassed him in political influence, and at least two other poets surpassed him in the value and originality of their writings. But his figure was more dignified and splendid, his talents were more varied, and his general accomplishments more remarkable than those of any other person of his age, the greatest age in the history of the Netherlands. Huygens is thegrand seigneurof the republic, the type of aristocratic oligarchy, the jewel and ornament of Dutch liberty. When we consider his imposing character and the positive value of his writings, we may well be surprised that he has not found a modern editor. It is a disgrace to Dutch scholarship that no complete collection of the writings of Huygens exists. His autobiography,De vita propria sermonum libri duo, did not see the light until 1817, and his remarkable poem,Cluyswerck, was not printed until 1841. As a poet Huygens shows a finer sense of form than any other early Dutch writer; the language, in his hands, becomes as flexible as Italian. His epistles and lighter pieces, in particular, display his metrical ease and facility to perfection.
(E. G.)
HUYSMANS,the name of four Flemish painters who matriculated in the Antwerp gild in the 17th century. Cornelis the elder, apprenticed in 1633, passed for a mastership in 1636, and remained obscure. Jacob, apprenticed to Frans Wouters in 1650, wandered to England towards the close of the reign of Charles II., and competed with Lely as a fashionable portrait painter. He executed a portrait of the queen, Catherine of Braganza, now in the national portrait gallery, and Horace Walpole assigns to him the likeness of Lady Bellasys, catalogued at Hampton Court as a work of Lely. His portrait of Izaak Walton in the National Gallery shows a disposition to imitate the styles of Rubens and Van Dyke. According to most accounts he died in London in 1696. Jan Baptist Huysmans, born at Antwerp in 1654, matriculated in 1676-1677, and died there in 1715-1716. He was younger brother to Cornelis Huysmans the second, who was born at Antwerp in 1648, and educated by Gaspar de Wit and Jacob van Artois. Of Jan Baptist little or nothing has been preserved, except that he registered numerous apprentices at Antwerp, and painted a landscape dated 1697 now in the Brussels museum. Cornelis the second is the only master of the name of Huysmans whose talent was largely acknowledged. He received lessons from two artists, one of whom was familiar with the Roman art of the Poussins, whilst the other inherited the scenic style of the school of Rubens. He combined the two in a rich, highly coloured, and usually effective style, which, however, was not free from monotony.Seldom attempting anything but woodside views with fancy backgrounds, half Italian, half Flemish, he painted with great facility, and left numerous examples behind. At the outset of his career he practised at Malines, where he married in 1682, and there too he entered into some business connexion with van der Meulen, for whom he painted some backgrounds. In 1706 he withdrew to Antwerp, where he resided till 1717, returning then to Malines, where he died on the 1st of June 1727.
Though most of his pictures were composed for cabinets rather than churches, he sometimes emulated van Artois in the production of large sacred pieces, and for many years his “Christ on the Road to Emmaus” adorned the choir of Notre Dame of Malines. In the gallery of Nantes, where three of his small landscapes are preserved, there hangs an “Investment of Luxembourg,” by van der Meulen, of which he is known to have laid in the background. The national galleries of London and Edinburgh contain each one example of his skill. Blenheim, too, and other private galleries in England, possess one or more of his pictures. But most of his works are on the European continent.
Though most of his pictures were composed for cabinets rather than churches, he sometimes emulated van Artois in the production of large sacred pieces, and for many years his “Christ on the Road to Emmaus” adorned the choir of Notre Dame of Malines. In the gallery of Nantes, where three of his small landscapes are preserved, there hangs an “Investment of Luxembourg,” by van der Meulen, of which he is known to have laid in the background. The national galleries of London and Edinburgh contain each one example of his skill. Blenheim, too, and other private galleries in England, possess one or more of his pictures. But most of his works are on the European continent.
HUYSMANS, JORIS KARL(1848-1907), French novelist, was born at Paris on the 5th of February 1848. He belonged to a family of artists of Dutch extraction; he entered the ministry of the interior, and was pensioned after thirty years’ service. His earliest venture in literature,Le Drageoir à épices(1874), contained stories and short prose poems showing the influence of Baudelaire.Marthe(1876), the life of a courtesan, was published in Brussels, and Huysmans contributed a story, “Sac au dos,” toLes Soirées de Médan, the collection of stories of the Franco-German war published by Zola. He then produced a series of novels of everyday life, includingLes Sœurs Vatard(1879),En Ménage(1881), andÀ vau-l’eau(1882), in which he outdid Zola in minute and uncompromising realism. He was influenced, however, more directly by Flaubert and the brothers de Goncourt than by Zola. InL’Art moderne(1883) he gave a careful study of impressionism and inCertains(1889) a series of studies of contemporary artists,À Rebours(1884), the history of the morbid tastes of a decadent aristocrat, des Esseintes, created a literary sensation, its caricature of literary and artistic symbolism covering much of the real beliefs of the leaders of the aesthetic revolt. InLà-BasHuysmans’s most characteristic hero, Durtal, makes his appearance. Durtal is occupied in writing the life of Gilles de Rais; the insight he gains into Satanism is supplemented by modern Parisian students of the black art; but already there are signs of a leaning to religion in the sympathetic figures of the religious bell-ringer of Saint Sulpice and his wife.En Route(1895) relates the strange conversion of Durtal to mysticism and Catholicism in his retreat to La Trappe. InLa Cathédrale(1898), Huysmans’s symbolistic interpretation of the cathedral of Chartres, he develops his enthusiasm for the purity of Catholic ritual. The life ofSainte Lydwine de Schiedam(1901), an exposition of the value of suffering, gives further proof of his conversion; andL’Oblat(1903) describes Durtal’s retreat to the Val des Saints, where he is attached as an oblate to a Benedictine monastery. Huysmans was nominated by Edmond de Goncourt as a member of the Académie des Goncourt. He died as a devout Catholic, after a long illness of cancer in the palate on the 13th of May 1907. Before his death he destroyed his unpublished MSS. His last book wasLes Foules de Lourdes(1906).
See Arthur Symons,Studies in two Literatures(1897) andThe Symbolist Movement in Literature(1899); Jean Lionnet inL’Évolution des idées(1903); Eugène Gilbert inFrance et Belgique(1905); J. Sargeret inLes Grands convertis(1906).
See Arthur Symons,Studies in two Literatures(1897) andThe Symbolist Movement in Literature(1899); Jean Lionnet inL’Évolution des idées(1903); Eugène Gilbert inFrance et Belgique(1905); J. Sargeret inLes Grands convertis(1906).
HUYSUM, JAN VAN(1682-1749), Dutch painter, was born at Amsterdam in 1682, and died in his native city on the 8th of February 1749. He was the son of Justus van Huysum, who is said to have been expeditious in decorating doorways, screens and vases. A picture by this artist is preserved in the gallery of Brunswick, representing Orpheus and the Beasts in a wooded landscape, and here we have some explanation of his son’s fondness for landscapes of a conventional and Arcadian kind; for Jan van Huysum, though skilled as a painter of still life, believed himself to possess the genius of a landscape painter. Half his pictures in public galleries are landscapes, views of imaginary lakes and harbours with impossible ruins and classic edifices, and woods of tall and motionless trees—the whole very glossy and smooth, and entirely lifeless. The earliest dated work of this kind is that of 1717, in the Louvre, a grove with maidens culling flowers near a tomb, ruins of a portico, and a distant palace on the shores of a lake bounded by mountains.
It is doubtful whether any artist ever surpassed van Huysum in representing fruit and flowers. It has been said that his fruit has no savour and his flowers have no perfume—in other words, that they are hard and artificial—but this is scarcely true. In substance fruit and flower are delicate and finished imitations of nature in its more subtle varieties of matter. The fruit has an incomparable blush of down, the flowers have a perfect delicacy of tissue. Van Huysum, too, shows supreme art in relieving flowers of various colours against each other, and often against a light and transparent background. He is always bright, sometimes even gaudy. Great taste and much grace and elegance are apparent in the arrangement of bouquets and fruit in vases adorned with bas reliefs or in baskets on marble tables. There is exquisite and faultless finish everywhere. But what van Huysum has not is the breadth, the bold effectiveness, and the depth of thought of de Heem, from whom he descends through Abraham Mignon.
Some of the finest of van Huysum’s fruit and flower pieces have been in English private collections: those of 1723 in the earl of Ellesmere’s gallery, others of 1730-1732 in the collections of Hope and Ashburton. One of the best examples is now in the National Gallery (1736-1737). No public museum has finer and more numerous specimens than the Louvre, which boasts of four landscapes and six panels with still life; then come Berlin and Amsterdam with four fruit and flower pieces; then St Petersburg, Munich, Hanover, Dresden, the Hague, Brunswick, Vienna, Carlsruhe and Copenhagen.
Some of the finest of van Huysum’s fruit and flower pieces have been in English private collections: those of 1723 in the earl of Ellesmere’s gallery, others of 1730-1732 in the collections of Hope and Ashburton. One of the best examples is now in the National Gallery (1736-1737). No public museum has finer and more numerous specimens than the Louvre, which boasts of four landscapes and six panels with still life; then come Berlin and Amsterdam with four fruit and flower pieces; then St Petersburg, Munich, Hanover, Dresden, the Hague, Brunswick, Vienna, Carlsruhe and Copenhagen.
HWANG HO[Hoang Ho], the second largest river in China. It is known to foreigners as the Yellow river—a name which is a literal translation of the Chinese. It rises among the Kuenlun mountains in central Asia, its head-waters being in close proximity to those of the Yangtsze-Kiang. It has a total length of about 2400 m. and drains an area of approximately 400,000 sq. m. The main stream has its source in two lakes named Tsaring-nor and Oring-nor, lying about 35° N., 97° E., and after flowing with a south-easterly course it bends sharply to the north-west and north, entering China in the province of Kansuh in lat. 36°. After passing Lanchow-fu, the capital of this province, the river takes an immense sweep to the north and north-east, until it encounters the rugged barrier ranges that here run north and south through the provinces of Shansi and Chihli. By these ranges it is forced due south for 500 m., forming the boundary between the provinces of Shansi and Shensi, until it finds an outlet eastwards at Tung Kwan—a pass which for centuries has been renowned as the gate of Asia, being indeed the sole commercial passage between central China and the West. At Tung Kwan the river is joined by its only considerable affluent in China proper, the Wei (Wei-ho), which drains the large province of Shensi, and the combined volume of water continues its way at first east and then north-east across the great plain to the sea. At low water in the winter season the discharge is only about 36,000 cub. ft. per second, whereas during the summer flood it reaches 116,000 ft. or more. The amount of sediment carried down is very large, though no accurate observations have been made. In the account of Lord Macartney’s embassy, which crossed the Yellow river in 1792, it was calculated to be 17,520 million cub. ft. a year, but this is considered very much over the mark. Two reasons, however, combine to render it probable that the sedimentary matter is very large in proportion to the volume of water: the first being the great fall, and the consequently rapid current over two-thirds of the river’s course; the second that the drainage area is nearly all covered with deposits of loess, which, being very friable, readily gives way before the rainfall and is washed down in large quantity. The ubiquity of this loess or yellow earth, as the Chinese call it, has in fact given its name both to the river which carries it in solution and to the sea (the Yellow Sea) into which it is discharged. It is calculatedby Dr Guppy (Journal of China Branch of Royal Asiatic Society, vol. xvi.) that the sediment brought down by the three northern rivers of China, viz., the Yangtsze, the Hwang-ho and the Peiho, is 24,000 million cub. ft. per annum, and is sufficient to fill up the whole of the Yellow Sea and the Gulf of Pechili in the space of about 36,000 years.
Unlike the Yangtsze, the Hwang-ho is of no practical value for navigation. The silt and sand form banks and bars at the mouth, the water is too shallow in winter and the current is too strong in summer, and, further, the bed of the river is continually shifting. It is this last feature which has earned for the river the name “China’s sorrow.” As the silt-laden waters debouch from the rocky bed of the upper reaches on to the plains, the current slackens, and the coarser detritus settles on the bottom. By degrees the bed rises, and the people build embankments to prevent the river from overflowing. As the bed rises the embankments must be raised too, until the stream is flowing many feet above the level of the surrounding country. As time goes on the situation becomes more and more dangerous; finally, a breach occurs, and the whole river pours over the country, carrying destruction and ruin with it. If the breach cannot be repaired the river leaves its old channel entirely and finds a new exit to the sea along the line of least resistance. Such in brief has been the story of the river since the dawn of Chinese history. At various times it has discharged its waters alternately on one side or the other of the great mass of mountains forming the promontory of Shantung, and by mouths as far apart from each other as 500 m. At each change it has worked havoc and disaster by covering the cultivated fields with 2 or 3 ft. of sand and mud.A great change in the river’s course occurred in 1851, when a breach was made in the north embankment near Kaifengfu in Honan. At this point the river bed was some 25 ft. above the plain; the water consequently forsook the old channel entirely and poured over the level country, finally seizing on the bed of a small river called the Tsing, and thereby finding an exit to the sea. Since that time the new channel thus carved out has remained the proper course of the river, the old or southerly channel being left quite dry. It required some fifteen or more years to repair damages from this outbreak, and to confine the stream by new embankments. After that there was for a time comparative immunity from inundations, but in 1882 fresh outbursts again began. The most serious of all took place in 1887, when it appeared probable that there would be again a permanent change in the river’s course. By dint of great exertions, however, the government succeeded in closing the breach, though not till January 1889, and not until there had been immense destruction of life and property. The outbreak on this occasion occurred, as all the more serious outbreaks have done, in Honan, a few miles west of the city of Kaifengfu. The stream poured itself over the level and fertile country to the southwards, sweeping whole villages before it, and converting the plain into one vast lake. The area affected was not less than 50,000 sq. m. and the loss of life was computed at over one million. Since 1887 there have been a series of smaller outbreaks, mostly at points lower down and in the neighbourhood of Chinanfu, the capital of Shantung. These perpetually occurring disasters entail a heavy expense on the government; and from the mere pecuniary point of view it would well repay them to call in the best foreign engineering skill available, an expedient, however, which has not commended itself to the Chinese authorities.
Unlike the Yangtsze, the Hwang-ho is of no practical value for navigation. The silt and sand form banks and bars at the mouth, the water is too shallow in winter and the current is too strong in summer, and, further, the bed of the river is continually shifting. It is this last feature which has earned for the river the name “China’s sorrow.” As the silt-laden waters debouch from the rocky bed of the upper reaches on to the plains, the current slackens, and the coarser detritus settles on the bottom. By degrees the bed rises, and the people build embankments to prevent the river from overflowing. As the bed rises the embankments must be raised too, until the stream is flowing many feet above the level of the surrounding country. As time goes on the situation becomes more and more dangerous; finally, a breach occurs, and the whole river pours over the country, carrying destruction and ruin with it. If the breach cannot be repaired the river leaves its old channel entirely and finds a new exit to the sea along the line of least resistance. Such in brief has been the story of the river since the dawn of Chinese history. At various times it has discharged its waters alternately on one side or the other of the great mass of mountains forming the promontory of Shantung, and by mouths as far apart from each other as 500 m. At each change it has worked havoc and disaster by covering the cultivated fields with 2 or 3 ft. of sand and mud.
A great change in the river’s course occurred in 1851, when a breach was made in the north embankment near Kaifengfu in Honan. At this point the river bed was some 25 ft. above the plain; the water consequently forsook the old channel entirely and poured over the level country, finally seizing on the bed of a small river called the Tsing, and thereby finding an exit to the sea. Since that time the new channel thus carved out has remained the proper course of the river, the old or southerly channel being left quite dry. It required some fifteen or more years to repair damages from this outbreak, and to confine the stream by new embankments. After that there was for a time comparative immunity from inundations, but in 1882 fresh outbursts again began. The most serious of all took place in 1887, when it appeared probable that there would be again a permanent change in the river’s course. By dint of great exertions, however, the government succeeded in closing the breach, though not till January 1889, and not until there had been immense destruction of life and property. The outbreak on this occasion occurred, as all the more serious outbreaks have done, in Honan, a few miles west of the city of Kaifengfu. The stream poured itself over the level and fertile country to the southwards, sweeping whole villages before it, and converting the plain into one vast lake. The area affected was not less than 50,000 sq. m. and the loss of life was computed at over one million. Since 1887 there have been a series of smaller outbreaks, mostly at points lower down and in the neighbourhood of Chinanfu, the capital of Shantung. These perpetually occurring disasters entail a heavy expense on the government; and from the mere pecuniary point of view it would well repay them to call in the best foreign engineering skill available, an expedient, however, which has not commended itself to the Chinese authorities.
(G. J.)
HWICCE,one of the kingdoms of Anglo-Saxon Britain. Its exact dimensions are unknown; they probably coincided with those of the old diocese of Worcester, the early bishops of which bore the title “Episcopus Hwicciorum.” It would therefore include Worcestershire, Gloucestershire except the Forest of Dean, the southern half of Warwickshire, and the neighbourhood of Bath. The name Hwicce survives in Wychwood in Oxfordshire and Whichford in Warwickshire. These districts, or at all events the southern portion of them, were according to theAnglo-Saxon Chronicle,s.a.577, originally conquered by the West Saxons under Ceawlin. In later times, however, the kingdom of the Hwicce appears to have been always subject to Mercian supremacy, and possibly it was separated from Wessex in the time of Edwin. The first kings of whom we read were two brothers, Eanhere and Eanfrith, probably contemporaries of Wulfhere. They were followed by a king named Osric, a contemporary of Æthelred, and he by a king Oshere. Oshere had three sons who reigned after him, Æthelheard, Æthelweard and Æthelric. The two last named appear to have been reigning in the year 706. At the beginning of Offa’s reign we again find the kingdom ruled by three brothers, named Eanberht, Uhtred and Aldred, the two latter of whom lived until about 780. After them the title of king seems to have been given up. Their successor Æthelmund, who was killed in a campaign against Wessex in 802, is described only as an earl. The district remained in possession of the rulers of Mercia until the fall of that kingdom. Together with the rest of English Mercia it submitted to King Alfred about 877-883 under Earl Æthelred, who possibly himself belonged to the Hwicce. No genealogy or list of kings has been preserved, and we do not know whether the dynasty was connected with that of Wessex or Mercia.
See Bede,Historia eccles.(edited by C. Plummer) iv. 13 (Oxford, 1896); W. de G. Birch,Cartularium Saxonicum, 43, 51, 76, 85, 116, 117, 122, 163, 187, 232, 233, 238 (Oxford, 1885-1889).
See Bede,Historia eccles.(edited by C. Plummer) iv. 13 (Oxford, 1896); W. de G. Birch,Cartularium Saxonicum, 43, 51, 76, 85, 116, 117, 122, 163, 187, 232, 233, 238 (Oxford, 1885-1889).
(F. G. M. B.)
HYACINTH(Gr. hyakinthos), also calledJacinth(through Ital.giacinto), one of the most popular of spring garden flowers. It was in cultivation prior to 1597, at which date it is mentioned by Gerard. Rea in 1665 mentions several single and double varieties as being then in English gardens, and Justice in 1754 describes upwards of fifty single-flowered varieties, and nearly one hundred double-flowered ones, as a selection of the best from the catalogues of two then celebrated Dutch growers. One of the Dutch sorts, called La Reine de Femmes, a single white, is said to have produced from thirty-four to thirty-eight flowers in a spike, and on its first appearance to have sold for 50 guilders a bulb; while one called Overwinnaar, or Conqueror, a double blue, sold at first for 100 guilders, Gloria Mundi for 500 guilders, and Koning Saloman for 600 guilders. Several sorts are at that date mentioned as blooming well in water-glasses. Justice relates that he himself raised several very valuable double-flowered kinds from seeds, which many of the sorts he describes are noted for producing freely.
The original of the cultivated hyacinth,Hyacinthus orientalis, a native of Greece and Asia Minor, is by comparison an insignificant plant, bearing on a spike only a few small, narrow-lobed, washy blue flowers, resembling in form those of our common blue-bell. So great has been the improvement effected by the florists, and chiefly by the Dutch, that the modern hyacinth would scarcely be recognized as the descendant of the type above referred to, the spikes being long and dense, composed of a large number of flowers; the spikes produced by strong bulbs not unfrequently measure 6 to 9 in. in length and from 7 to 9 in. in circumference, with the flowers closely set on from bottom to top. Of late years much improvement has been effected in the size of the individual flowers and the breadth of their recurving lobes, as well as in securing increased brilliancy and depth of colour.
The peculiarities of the soil and climate of Holland are so very favourable to their production that Dutch florists have made a specialty of the growth of those and other bulbous-rooted flowers. Hundreds of acres are devoted to the growth of hyacinths in the vicinity of Haarlem, and bring in a revenue of several hundreds of thousands of pounds. Some notion of the vast number imported into England annually may be formed from the fact that, for the supply of flowering plants to Covent Garden, one market grower alone produces from 60,000 to 70,000 in pots under glass, their blooming period being accelerated by artificial heat, and extending from Christmas onwards until they bloom naturally in the open ground.
In the spring flower garden few plants make a more effective display than the hyacinth. Dotted in clumps in the flower borders, and arranged in masses of well-contrasted colours In beds in the flower garden, there are no flowers which impart during their season—March and April—a gayer tone to the parterre. The bulbs are rarely grown a second time, either for indoor or outdoor culture, though with care they might be utilized for the latter purpose; and hence the enormous numbers which are procured each recurring year from Holland.
The first hyacinths were single-flowered, but towards the close of the 17th century double-flowered ones began to appear, and till a recent period these bulbs were the most esteemed. At the present time, however, the single-flowered sorts are in the ascendant, as they produce more regular and symmetrical spikes of blossom, the flowers being closely set and more or less horizontal in direction, while most of the double sorts have the bells distant and dependent, so that the spike is loose and by comparisonineffective. For pot culture, and for growth in water-glasses especially, the single-flowered sorts are greatly to be preferred. Few if any of the original kinds are now in cultivation, a succession of new and improved varieties having been raised, the demand for which is regulated in some respects by fashion.