VOLUME XII SLICE VIII Haller, Albrecht to Harmonium (continued 4)

In 1829 his career of authorship began with the appearance of the well-known essay on the “Philosophy of the Unconditioned” (a critique of Comte’s Cours de philosophie)—the first of a series of articles contributed by him to the Edinburgh Review. He was elected in 1836 to the Edinburgh chair of logic and metaphysics, and from this time dates the influence which, during the next twenty years, he exerted over the thought of the younger generation in Scotland. Much about the same time he began the preparation of an annotated edition of Reid’s works, intending to annex to it a number of dissertations. Before, however, this design had been carried out, he was struck (1844) with paralysis of the right side, which seriously crippled his bodily powers, though it left his mind wholly unimpaired. The edition of Reid appeared in 1846, but with only seven of the intended dissertations—the last, too, unfinished. It was his distinct purpose to complete the work, but this purpose remained at his death unfulfilled, and all that could be done afterwards was to print such materials for the remainder, or such notes on the subjects to be discussed, as were found among his MSS. Considerably before this time he had formed his theory of logic, the leading principles of which were indicated in the prospectus of “an essay on a new analytic of logical forms” prefixed to his edition of Reid. But the elaboration of the scheme in its details and applications continued during the next few years to occupy much of his leisure. Out of this arose a sharp controversy with Augustus de Morgan. The essay did not appear, but the results of the labour gone through are contained in the appendices to his Lectures on Logic. Another occupation of these years was the preparation of extensive materials for a publication which he designed on the personal history, influence and opinions of Luther. Here he advanced so far as to have planned and partly carried out the arrangement of the work; but it did not go further, and still remains in MS. In 1852-1853 appeared the first and second editions of his Discussions in Philosophy, Literature and Education, a reprint, with large additions, of his contributions to the Edinburgh Review. Soon after, his general health began to fail. Still, however, aided now as ever by his devoted wife, he persevered in literary labour; and during 1854-1855 he brought out nine volumes of a new edition of Stewart’s works. The only remaining volume was to have contained a memoir of Stewart, but this he did not live to write. He taught his class for the last time in the winter of 1855-1856. Shortly after the close of the session he was taken ill, and on the 6th of May 1856 he died in Edinburgh.

Hamilton’s positive contribution to the progress of thought is comparatively slight, and his writings, even where reinforced by the copious lecture notes taken by his pupils, cannot be said to present a comprehensive philosophic system. None the less he did considerable service by stimulating a spirit of criticism in his pupils, by insisting on the great importance of psychology as opposed to the older metaphysical method, and not least by his recognition of the importance of German philosophy, especially that of Kant. By far his most important work was his “Philosophy of the Unconditioned,” the development of the principle that for the human finite mind there can be no knowledge of the Infinite. The basis of his whole argument is the thesis, “To think is to condition.” Deeply impressed with Kant’s antithesis between subject and object, the knowing and the known, Hamilton laid down the principle that every object is known only in virtue of its relations to other objects (see Relativity of Knowledge). From this it follows limitless time, space, power and so forth are humanly speaking inconceivable. The fact, however, that all thought seems to demand the idea of the infinite or absolute provides a sphere for faith, which is thus the specific faculty of theology. It is a weakness characteristic of the human mind that it cannot conceive any phenomenon without a beginning: hence the conception of the causal relation, according to which every phenomenon has its cause in preceding phenomena, and its effect in subsequent phenomena. The causal concept is, therefore, only one of the ordinary necessary forms of the cognitive consciousness limited, as we have seen, by being confined to that which is relative or conditioned. As regards the problem of the nature of objectivity, Hamilton simply accepts the evidence of consciousness as to the separate existence of the object: “the root of our nature cannot be a lie.” In virtue of this assumption Hamilton’s philosophy becomes a “natural realism.” In fact his whole position is a strange compound of Kant and Reid. Its chief practical corollary is the denial of philosophy as a method of attaining absolute knowledge and its relegation to the academic sphere of mental training. The transition from philosophy to theology, i.e. to the sphere of faith, is presented by Hamilton under the analogous relation between the mind and the body. As the mind is to the body, so is the unconditioned Absolute or God to the world of the conditioned. Consciousness, itself a conditioned phenomenon, must derive from or depend on some different thing prior to or behind material phenomena. Curiously enough, however, Hamilton does not explain how it comes about that God, who in the terms of the analogy bears to the conditioned mind the relation which the conditioned mind bears to its objects, can Himself be unconditioned. He can be regarded only as related to consciousness, and in so far is, therefore, not absolute or unconditioned. Thus the very principles of Hamilton’s philosophy are apparently violated in his theological argument.

Hamilton regarded logic as a purely formal science; it seemed to him an unscientific mixing together of heterogeneous elements to treat as parts of the same science the formal and the material conditions of knowledge. He was quite ready to allow that on this view logic cannot be used as a means of discovering or guaranteeing facts, even the most general, and expressly asserted that it has to do, not with the objective validity, but only with the mutual relations, of judgments. He further held that induction and deduction are correlative processes of formal logic, each resting on the necessities of thought and deriving thence its several laws. The only logical laws which he recognized were the three axioms of identity, non-contradiction, and excluded middle, which he regarded as severally phases of one general condition of the possibility of existence and, therefore, of thought. The law of reason and consequent he considered not as different, but merely as expressing metaphysically what these express logically. He added as a postulate—which in his theory was of importance—“that logic be allowed to state explicitly what is thought implicitly.”

In logic, Hamilton is known chiefly as the inventor of the doctrine of the “quantification of the predicate,” i.e. that the judgment “All A is B” should really mean “All A is all B,” whereas the ordinary universal proposition should be stated “All A is some B.” This view, which was supported by Stanley Jevons, is fundamentally at fault since it implies that the predicate is thought of in its extension; in point of fact when a judgment is made, e.g. about men, that they are mortal (“All men are mortal”), the intention is to attribute a quality (i.e. the predicate is used in connotation). In other words, we are not considering the question “what kind are men among the various things which must die?” (as is implied in the form “all men are some mortals”) but “what is the fact about men?” We are not stating a mere identity (see further, e.g., H. W. B. Joseph, Introduction to Logic, 1906, pp. 198 foll.).

The philosopher to whom above all others Hamilton professed allegiance was Aristotle. His works were the object of his profound and constant study, and supplied in fact the mould in which his whole philosophy was cast. With the commentators on the Aristotelian writings, ancient, medieval and modern, he was also familiar; and the scholastic philosophy he studied with care and appreciation at a time when it had hardly yet begun to attract attention in his country. His wide reading enabled him to trace many a doctrine to the writings of forgotten thinkers; and nothing gave him greater pleasure than to draw forth such from their obscurity, and to give due acknowledgment, even if it chanced to be of the prior possession of a view or argument that he had thought out for himself. Of modern German philosophy he was a diligent, if not always a sympathetic, student. How profoundly his thinking was modified by that of Kant is evident from the tenor of his speculations; nor was this less the case because, on fundamental points, he came to widely different conclusions.

Any account of Hamilton would be incomplete which regarded him only as a philosopher, for his knowledge and his interests embraced all subjects related to that of the human mind. Physical and mathematical science had, indeed, no attraction for him; but his study of anatomy and physiology was minute and experimental. In literature alike ancient and modern he was widely and deeply read; and, from his unusual powers of memory, the stores which he had acquired were always at command. If there was one period with the literature of which he was more particularly familiar, it was the 16th and 17th centuries. Here in every department he was at home. He had gathered a vast amount of its theological lore, had a critical knowledge especially of its Latin poetry, and was minutely acquainted with the history of the actors in its varied scenes, not only as narrated in professed records, but as revealed in the letters, table-talk, and casual effusions of themselves or their contemporaries (cf. his article on the Epistolae obscurorum virorum, and his pamphlet on the Disruption of the Church of Scotland in 1843). Among his literary projects were editions of the works of George Buchanan and Julius Caesar Scaliger. His general scholarship found expression in his library, which, though mainly, was far from being exclusively, a philosophical collection. It now forms a distinct portion of the library of the university of Glasgow.

His chief practical interest was in education—an interest which he manifested alike as a teacher and as a writer, and which had led him long before he was either to a study of the subject both theoretical and historical. He thence adopted views as to the ends and methods of education that, when afterwards carried out or advocated by him, met with general recognition; but he also expressed in one of his articles an unfavourable view of the study of mathematics as a mental gymnastic, which excited much opposition, but which he never saw reason to alter. As a teacher, he was zealous and successful, and his writings on university organization and reform had, at the time of their appearance, a decisive practical effect, and contain much that is of permanent value.

His posthumous works are his Lectures on Metaphysics and Logic, 4 vols., edited by H. L. Mansel, Oxford, and John Veitch (Metaphysics, 1858; Logic, 1860); and Additional Notes to Reid’s Works, from Sir W. Hamilton’s MSS., under the editorship of H. L. Mansel, D.D. (1862). A Memoir of Sir W. Hamilton, by Veitch, appeared in 1869.

HAMILTON, WILLIAM GERARD (1729-1796), English statesman, popularly known as “Single Speech Hamilton,” was born in London on the 28th of January 1729, the son of a Scottish bencher of Lincoln’s Inn. He was educated at Winchester and at Oriel College, Oxford. Inheriting his father’s fortune he entered political life and became M.P. for Petersfield, Hampshire. His maiden speech, delivered on the 13th of November 1755, during the debate on the address, which excited Walpole’s admiration, is generally supposed to have been his only effort in the House of Commons. But the nickname “Single Speech” is undoubtedly misleading, and Hamilton is known to have spoken with success on other occasions, both in the House of Commons and in the Irish parliament. In 1756 he was appointed one of the commissioners for trade and plantations, and in 1761 he became chief secretary to Lord Halifax, the lord-lieutenant of Ireland, as well as Irish M. P. for Killebegs and English M. P. for Pontefract. He was chancellor of the exchequer in Ireland in 1763, and subsequently filled various other administrative offices. Hamilton was thought very highly of by Dr Johnson, and it is certain that he was strongly opposed to the British taxation of America. He died in London on the 16th of July 1796, and was buried in the chancel vault of St Martin’s-in-the-fields.

Two of his speeches in the Irish House of Commons, and some other miscellaneous works, were published after his death under the title Parliamentary Logick.

HAMILTON, SIR WILLIAM ROWAN (1805-1865), Scottish mathematician, was born in Dublin on the 4th of August 1805. His father, Archibald Hamilton, who was a solicitor, and his uncle, James Hamilton (curate of Trim), migrated from Scotland in youth. A branch of the Scottish family to which they belonged had settled in the north of Ireland in the time of James I., and this fact seems to have given rise to the common impression that Hamilton was an Irishman.

His genius first displayed itself in the form of a wonderful power of acquiring languages. At the age of seven he had already made very considerable progress in Hebrew, and before he was thirteen he had acquired, under the care of his uncle, who was an extraordinary linguist, almost as many languages as he had years of age. Among these, besides the classical and the modern European languages, were included Persian, Arabic, Hindustani, Sanskrit and even Malay. But though to the very end of his life he retained much of the singular learning of his childhood and youth, often reading Persian and Arabic in the intervals of sterner pursuits, he had long abandoned them as a study, and employed them merely as a relaxation.

His mathematical studies seem to have been undertaken and carried to their full development without any assistance whatever, and the result is that his writings belong to no particular “school,” unless indeed we consider them to form, as they are well entitled to do, a school by themselves. As an arithmetical calculator he was not only wonderfully expert, but he seems to have occasionally found a positive delight in working out to an enormous number of places of decimals the result of some irksome calculation. At the age of twelve he engaged Zerah Colburn, the American “calculating boy,” who was then being exhibited as a curiosity in Dublin, and he had not always the worst of the encounter. But, two years before, he had accidentally fallen in with a Latin copy of Euclid, which he eagerly devoured; and at twelve he attacked Newton’s Arithmetica universalis. This was his introduction to modern analysis. He soon commenced to read the Principia, and at sixteen he had mastered a great part of that work, besides some more modern works on analytical geometry and the differential calculus.

About this period he was also engaged in preparation for entrance at Trinity College, Dublin, and had therefore to devote a portion of his time to classics. In the summer of 1822, in his seventeenth year, he began a systematic study of Laplace’s Mécanique Céleste. Nothing could be better fitted to call forth such mathematical powers as those of Hamilton; for Laplace’s great work, rich to profusion in analytical processes alike novel and powerful, demands from the most gifted student careful and often laborious study. It was in the successful effort to open this treasure-house that Hamilton’s mind received its final temper, “Dès-lors il commença à marcher seul,” to use the words of the biographer of another great mathematician. From that time he appears to have devoted himself almost wholly to original investigation (so far at least as regards mathematics), though he ever kept himself well acquainted with the progress of science both in Britain and abroad.

Having detected an important defect in one of Laplace’s demonstrations, he was induced by a friend to write out his remarks, that they might be shown to Dr John Brinkley (1763-1835), afterwards bishop of Cloyne, but who was then the first royal astronomer for Ireland, and an accomplished mathematician. Brinkley seems at once to have perceived the vast talents of young Hamilton, and to have encouraged him in the kindest manner. He is said to have remarked in 1823 of this lad of eighteen: “This young man, I do not say will be, but is, the first mathematician of his age.”

Hamilton’s career at College was perhaps unexampled. Amongst a number of competitors of more than ordinary merit, he was first in every subject and at every examination. He achieved the rare distinction of obtaining an optime for both Greek and for physics. How many more such honours he might have attained it is impossible to say; but he was expected to win both the gold medals at the degree examination, had his career as a student not been cut short by an unprecedented event. This was his appointment to the Andrews professorship of astronomy in the university of Dublin, vacated by Dr Brinkley in 1827. The chair was not exactly offered to him, as has been sometimes asserted, but the electors, having met and talked over the subject, authorized one of their number, who was Hamilton’s personal friend, to urge him to become a candidate, a step which his modesty had prevented him from taking. Thus, when barely twenty-two, he was established at the Observatory, Dunsink, near Dublin. He was not specially fitted for the post, for although he had a profound acquaintance with theoretical astronomy, he had paid but little attention to the regular work of the practical astronomer. And it must be said that his time was better employed in original investigations than it would have been had he spent it in observations made even with the best of instruments,—infinitely better than if he had spent it on those of the observatory, which, however good originally, were then totally unfit for the delicate requirements of modern astronomy. Indeed there can be little doubt that Hamilton was intended by the university authorities who elected him to the professorship of astronomy to spend his time as he best could for the advancement of science, without being tied down to any particular branch. Had he devoted himself to practical astronomy they would assuredly have furnished him with modern instruments and an adequate staff of assistants.

In 1835, being secretary to the meeting of the British Association which was held that year in Dublin, he was knighted by the lord-lieutenant. But far higher honours rapidly succeeded, among which we may merely mention his election in 1837 to the president’s chair in the Royal Irish Academy, and the rare distinction of being made corresponding member of the academy of St Petersburg. These are the few salient points (other, of course, than the epochs of his more important discoveries and inventions presently to be considered) in the uneventful life of this great man. He retained his wonderful faculties unimpaired to the very last, and steadily continued till within a day or two of his death, which occurred on the 2nd of September 1865, the task (his Elements of Quaternions) which had occupied the last six years of his life.

The germ of his first great discovery was contained in one of those early papers which in 1823 he communicated to Dr Brinkley, by whom, under the title of “Caustics,” it was presented in 1824 to the Royal Irish Academy. It was referred as usual to a committee. Their report, while acknowledging the novelty and value of its contents, and the great mathematical skill of its author, recommended that, before being published, it should be still further developed and simplified. During the next three years the paper grew to an immense bulk, principally by the additional details which had been inserted at the desire of the committee. But it also assumed a much more intelligible form, and the grand features of the new method were now easily to be seen. Hamilton himself seems not till this period to have fully understood either the nature or the importance of his discovery, for it is only now that we find him announcing his intention of applying his method to dynamics. The paper was finally entitled “Theory of Systems of Rays,” and the first part was printed in 1828 in the Transactions of the Royal Irish Academy. It is understood that the more important contents of the second and third parts appeared in the three voluminous supplements (to the first part) which were published in the same Transactions, and in the two papers “On a General Method in Dynamics,” which appeared in the Philosophical Transactions in 1834-1835. The principle of “Varying Action” is the great feature of these papers; and it is strange, indeed, that the one particular result of this theory which, perhaps more than anything else that Hamilton has done, has rendered his name known beyond the little world of true philosophers, should have been easily within the reach of Augustin Fresnel and others for many years before, and in no way required Hamilton’s new conceptions or methods, although it was by them that he was led to its discovery. This singular result is still known by the name “conical refraction,” which he proposed for it when he first predicted its existence in the third supplement to his “Systems of Rays,” read in 1832.

The step from optics to dynamics in the application of the method of “Varying Action” was made in 1827, and communicated to the Royal Society, in whose Philosophical Transactions for 1834 and 1835 there are two papers on the subject. These display, like the “Systems of Rays,” a mastery over symbols and a flow of mathematical language almost unequalled. But they contain what is far more valuable still, the greatest addition which dynamical science had received since the grand strides made by Sir Isaac Newton and Joseph Louis Lagrange. C. G. J. Jacobi and other mathematicians have developed to a great extent, and as a question of pure mathematics only, Hamilton’s processes, and have thus made extensive additions to our knowledge of differential equations. But there can be little doubt that we have as yet obtained only a mere glimpse of the vast physical results of which they contain the germ. And though this is of course by far the more valuable aspect in which any such contribution to science can be looked at, the other must not be despised. It is characteristic of most of Hamilton’s, as of nearly all great discoveries, that even their indirect consequences are of high value.

The other great contribution made by Hamilton to mathematical science, the invention of Quaternions, is treated under that heading. The following characteristic extract from a letter shows Hamilton’s own opinion of his mathematical work, and also gives a hint of the devices which he employed to render written language as expressive as actual speech. His first great work, Lectures on Quaternions (Dublin, 1852), is almost painful to read in consequence of the frequent use of italics and capitals.

“I hope that it may not be considered as unpardonable vanity or presumption on my part, if, as my own taste has always led me to feel a greater interest in methods than in results, so it is by methods, rather than by any theorems, which can be separately quoted, that I desire and hope to be remembered. Nevertheless it is only human nature, to derive some pleasure from being cited, now and then, even about a ‘Theorem’; especially where ... the quoter can enrich the subject, by combining it with researches of his own.”

The discoveries, papers and treatises we have mentioned might well have formed the whole work of a long and laborious life. But not to speak of his enormous collection of MS. books, full to overflowing with new and original matter, which have been handed over to Trinity College, Dublin, the works we have already called attention to barely form the greater portion of what he has published. His extraordinary investigations connected with the solution of algebraic equations of the fifth degree, and his examination of the results arrived at by N. H. Abel, G. B. Jerrard, and others in their researches on this subject, form another grand contribution to science. There is next his great paper on Fluctuating Functions, a subject which, since the time of J. Fourier, has been of immense and ever increasing value in physical applications of mathematics. There is also the extremely ingenious invention of the hodograph. Of his extensive investigations into the solution (especially by numerical approximation) of certain classes of differential equations which constantly occur in the treatment of physical questions, only a few items have been published, at intervals, in the Philosophical Magazine. Besides all this, Hamilton was a voluminous correspondent. Often a single letter of his occupied from fifty to a hundred or more closely written pages, all devoted to the minute consideration of every feature of some particular problem; for it was one of the peculiar characteristics of his mind never to be satisfied with a general understanding of a question; he pursued it until he knew it in all its details. He was ever courteous and kind in answering applications for assistance in the study of his works, even when his compliance must have cost him much time. He was excessively precise and hard to please with reference to the final polish of his own works for publication; and it was probably for this reason that he published so little compared with the extent of his investigations.

Like most men of great originality, Hamilton generally matured his ideas before putting pen to paper. “He used to carry on,” says his elder son, William Edwin Hamilton, “long trains of algebraical and arithmetical calculations in his mind, during which he was unconscious of the earthly necessity of eating; we used to bring in a ’snack’ and leave it in his study, but a brief nod of recognition of the intrusion of the chop or cutlet was often the only result, and his thoughts went on soaring upwards.”

For further details about Hamilton (his poetry and his association with poets, for instance) the reader is referred to the Dublin University Magazine (Jan. 1842), the Gentleman’s Magazine (Jan. 1866), and the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society (Feb. 1866); and also to an article by the present writer in the North British Review (Sept. 1866), from which much of the above sketch has been taken. His works have been collected and published by R. P. Graves, Life of Sir W. R. Hamilton (3 vols., 1882, 1885, 1889).

(P. G. T.)

HAMILTON, a town of Dundas and Normanby counties, Victoria, Australia, on the Grange Burne Creek, 197½ m. by rail W. of Melbourne. Pop. (1901) 4026. Hamilton has a number of educational institutions, chief among which are the Hamilton and Western District College, one of the finest buildings of its kind in Victoria, the Hamilton Academy, and the Alexandra ladies’ college, a state school, and a Catholic college. It has a fine racecourse, and pastoral and agricultural exhibitions are held annually, as the surrounding district is mainly devoted to sheep-farming. Mutton is frozen and exported. Hamilton became a borough in 1859.

HAMILTON (Grand or Ashuanipi), the chief river of Labrador, Canada. It rises in the Labrador highlands at an elevation of 1700 ft., its chief sources being Lakes Attikonak and Ashuanipi, between 65° and 66° W. and 52° and 53° N. After a precipitous course of 600 m. it empties into Melville Lake (90 m. long and 18 wide), an extension of Hamilton inlet, on the Atlantic. About 220 m. from its mouth occur the Grand Falls of Labrador. Here in a distance of 12 m. the river drops 760 ft., culminating in a final vertical fall of 316 ft. Below the falls are violent rapids, and the river sweeps through a deep and narrow canyon. The country through which it passes is for the most part a wilderness of barren rock, full of lakes and lacustrine rivers, many of which are its tributaries. In certain portions of the valley spruce and poplars grow to a moderate size. From the head of Lake Attikonak a steep and rocky portage of less than a mile leads to Burnt Lake, which is drained into the St Lawrence by the Romaine river.

HAMILTON, one of the chief cities of Canada, capital of Wentworth county, Ontario. It occupies a highly picturesque situation upon the shore of a spacious land-locked bay at the western end of Lake Ontario. It covers the plain stretching between the water-front and the escarpment (called “The Mountain”), this latter being a continuation of that over which the Falls of Niagara plunge 40 m. to the west. Founded about 1778 by one Robert Land, the growth of Hamilton has been steady and substantial, and, owing to its remarkable industrial development, it has come to be called “the Birmingham of Canada.” This development is largely due to the use of electrical energy generated by water-power, in regard to which Hamilton stands first among Canadian cities. The electricity has not, however, been obtained from Niagara Falls, but from De Cew Falls, 35 m. S.E. of the city. The entire electrical railway system, the lighting of the city, and the majority of the factories are operated by power obtained from this source. The manufacturing interests of Hamilton are varied, and some of the establishments are of vast size, employing many thousands of hands each, such as the International Harvester Co. and the Canadian Westinghouse Co. In addition Hamilton is the centre of one of the finest fruit-growing districts on the continent, and its open-air market is a remarkable sight. The municipal matters are managed by a mayor and board of aldermen. Six steam railroads and three electric radial roads afford Hamilton ample facilities for transport by land, while during the season of navigation a number of steamboat lines supply daily services to Toronto and other lake ports. Entrance into the broad bay is obtained through a short canal intersecting Burlington Beach, which is crossed by two swing bridges, whereof one—that of the Grand Trunk railway—is among the largest of its kind in the world. Burlington Beach is lined with cottages occupied by the city residents during the hot summer months. Hamilton is rich in public institutions. The educational equipment comprises a normal college, collegiate institute, model school and more than a score of public schools, for the most part housed in handsome stone and brick buildings. There are four hospitals, and the asylum for the insane is the largest in Canada. There is an excellent public library, and in the same building with it a good art school. Hamilton boasts of a number of parks, Dundurn Castle Park, containing several interesting relics of the war of 1812, being the finest, and, as it is practically within the city limits, it is a great boon to the people. Gore Park, in the centre of the city, is used for concerts, given by various bands, one of which has gained an international reputation. Since its incorporation in 1833 the history of Hamilton has shown continuous growth. In 1836 the population was 2846; In 1851, 10,248; in 1861, 19,096; in 1871, 26,880; in 1881, 36,661; in 1891, 48,959; and in 1901, 52,634. The Anglican bishop of Niagara has his seat here, and also a Roman Catholic bishop. Hamilton returns two members to the Provincial parliament and two to the Dominion.

HAMILTON, a municipal and police burgh of Lanarkshire, Scotland. Pop. (1891), 24,859; (1901), 32,775. It is situated about 1 m. from the junction of the Avon with the Clyde, 10¾ m. S.E. of Glasgow by road, and has stations on the Caledonian and North British railways. The town hall in the Scottish Baronial style has a clock-tower 130 ft. high, and the county buildings are in the Grecian style. Among the subjects of antiquarian interest are Queenzie Neuk, the spot where Queen Mary rested on her journey to Langside, the old steeple and pillory built in the reign of Charles I., the Mote Hill, the old Runic cross, and the carved gateway in the palace park. In the churchyard there is a monument to four covenanters who suffered at Edinburgh, on the 7th of December 1600, whose heads were buried here. Among the industries are manufactures of cotton, lace and embroidered muslins, and carriage-building, and there are also large market gardens, the district being famed especially for its apples, and some dairy-farming; but the prosperity of the town depends chiefly upon the coal and ironstone of the surrounding country, which is the richest mineral field in Scotland. Hamilton originated in the 15th century under the protecting influence of the lords of Hamilton, and became a burgh of barony in 1456 and a royal burgh in 1548. The latter rights were afterwards surrendered and it was made the chief burgh of the regality and dukedom of Hamilton in 1668, the third marquess having been created duke in 1643. It unites with Airdrie, Falkirk, Lanark and Linlithgow to form the Falkirk district of burghs, which returns one member to parliament.

Immediately east of the town is Hamilton palace, the seat of the duke of Hamilton and Brandon, premier peer of Scotland. It occupies most of the site of the original burgh of Netherton. The first mansion was erected at the end of the 16th century and rebuilt about 1710, to be succeeded in 1822-1829 by the present palace, a magnificent building in the classical style. Its front is a specimen of the enriched Corinthian architecture, with a projecting pillared portico after the style of the temple of Jupiter Stator at Rome, 264 ft. in length and 60 ft. in height. Each of the twelve pillars of the portico is a single block of stone, quarried at Dalserf, midway between Hamilton and Lanark, and required thirty horses to draw it to its site. The interior is richly decorated and once contained the finest collection of paintings in Scotland, but most of them, together with the Hamilton and Beckford libraries, were sold in 1882. Within the grounds, which comprise nearly 1500 acres, is the mausoleum erected by the 10th duke, a structure resembling in general design that of the emperor Hadrian at Rome, being a circular building springing from a square basement, and enclosing a decorated octagonal chapel, the door of which is a copy in bronze of Ghiberti’s gates at Florence. At Barncluith, 1 m. S.E. of the town, may be seen the Dutch gardens which were laid down in terraces on the steep banks of the Avon. Their quaint shrubbery and old-fashioned setting render them attractive. They were planned in 1583 by John Hamilton, an ancestor of Lord Belhaven, and now belong to Lord Ruthven. About 2 m. S.E. of Hamilton, within the western High Park, on the summit of a precipitous rock 200 ft. in height, the foot of which is washed by the Avon, stand the ruins of Cadzow Castle, the subject of a spirited ballad by Sir Walter Scott. The castle had been a royal residence for at least two centuries before Bannockburn (1314), but immediately after the battle Robert Bruce granted it to Sir Walter FitzGilbert Hamilton, the son of the founder of the family, in return for the fealty. Near it is the noble chase with its ancient oaks, the remains of the Caledonian Forest, where are still preserved some of the aboriginal breed of wild cattle. Opposite Cadzow Castle, in the eastern High Park, on the right bank of the Avon, is Chatelherault, consisting of stables and offices, and imitating in outline the palace of that name in France.

HAMILTON, a village of Madison county, New York, U.S.A., about 29 m. S.W. of Utica. Pop. (1890), 1744; (1900), 1627; (1905) 1522; (1910) 1689. It is served by the New York, Ontario & Western railway. Hamilton is situated in a productive agricultural region, and has a large trade in hops; among its manufactures are canned vegetables, lumber and knit goods. There are several valuable stone quarries in the vicinity. The village owns and operates its water-supply and electric-lighting system. Hamilton is the seat of Colgate University, which was founded in 1819, under the name of the Hamilton Literary and Theological Institution, as a training school for the Baptist ministry, was chartered as Madison University in 1846, and was renamed in 1890 in honour of the Colgate family, several of whom, especially William (1783-1857), the soap manufacturer, and his sons, James Boorman (1818-1904), and Samuel (1822-1897), were its liberal benefactors. In 1908-1909 it had a university faculty of 33 members, 307 students in the college, 60 in the theological department, and 134 in the preparatory department, and a library of 54,000 volumes, including the Baptist Historical collection (about 5000 vols.) given by Samuel Colgate. The township in which the village is situated and which bears the same name (pop. in 1910, 3825) was settled about 1790 and was separated from the township of Paris in 1795. The village was incorporated in 1812.

HAMILTON, a city and the county-seat of Butler county, Ohio, U.S.A., on both sides of the Great Miami river, 25 m. N. of Cincinnati. Pop. (1890), 17,565; (1900), 23,914, of whom 2949 were foreign-born; (1910 census), 35,279. It is served by the Cincinnati, Hamilton & Dayton, and the Pittsburg, Cincinnati, Chicago & St Louis railways, and by interurban electric lines connecting with Cincinnati, Dayton and Toledo. The valley in which Hamilton is situated is noted for its fertility. The city has a fine public square and the Lane free library (1866); the court house is its most prominent public building. A hydraulic canal provides the city with good water power, and in 1905, in the value of its factory products ($13,992,574, being 31.3% more than in 1900), Hamilton ranked tenth among the cities of the state. Its most distinctive manufactures are paper and wood pulp; more valuable are foundry and machine shop products; other manufactures are safes, malt liquors, flour, woollens, Corliss engines, carriages and wagons and agricultural implements. The municipality owns and operates the water-works, electric-lighting plant and gas plant. A stockade fort was built here in 1791 by General Arthur Saint Clair, but it was abandoned in 1796, two years after the place had been laid out as a town and named Fairfield. The town was renamed, in honour of Alexander Hamilton, about 1796. In 1803 Hamilton was made the county-seat; in 1810 it was incorporated as a village; in 1854 it annexed the town of Rossville on the opposite side of the river; and in 1857 it was made a city. In 1908, by the annexation of suburbs, the area and the population of Hamilton were considerably increased. Hamilton was the early home of William Dean Howells, whose recollections of it are to be found in his A Boy’s Town; his father’s anti-slavery sentiments made it necessary for him to sell his printing office, where the son had learned to set type in his teens, and to remove to Dayton.

HAMIRPUR, a town and district of British India, in the Allahabad division of the United Provinces. The town stands on a tongue of land near the confluence of the Betwa and Jumna, 110 m. N.W. of Allahabad. Pop. (1901), 6721. It was founded, according to tradition, in the 11th century by Hamir Deo, a Karchuli Rajput expelled from Alwar by the Mahommedans.

The district has an area of 2289 sq. m., and encloses the native states of Sarila, Jigni and Bihat, besides portions of Charkhari and Garrauli. Hamirpur forms part of the great plain of Bundelkhand, which stretches from the banks of the Jumna to the central Vindhyan plateau. The district is in shape an irregular parallelogram, with a general slope northward from the low hills on the southern boundary. The scenery is rendered picturesque by the artificial lakes of Mahoba. These magnificent reservoirs were constructed by the Chandel rajas before the Mahommedan conquest, for purposes of irrigation and as sheets of ornamental water. Many of them enclose craggy islets or peninsulas, crowned by the ruins of granite temples, exquisitely carved and decorated. From the base of this hill and lake country the general plain of the district spreads northward in an arid and treeless level towards the broken banks of the rivers. Of these the principal are the Betwa and its tributary the Dhasan, both of which are unnavigable. There is little waste land, except in the ravines by the river sides. The deep black soil of Bundelkhand, known as mār, retains the moisture under a dried and rifted surface, and renders the district fertile. The staple produce is grain of various sorts, the most important being gram. Cotton is also a valuable crop. Agriculture suffers much from the spread of the kāns grass, a noxious weed which overruns the fields and is found to be almost ineradicable wherever it has once obtained a footing. Droughts and famine are unhappily common. The climate is dry and hot, owing to the absence of shade and the bareness of soil, except in the neighbourhood of the Mahoba lakes, which cool and moisten the atmosphere.

In 1901 the pop. was 458,542, showing a decrease of 11% in the decade, due to the famine of 1895-1897. Export trade is chiefly in agricultural produce and cotton cloth. Rath is the principal commercial centre. The Midland branch of the Great Indian Peninsula railway passes through the south of the district.

From the 9th to the 12th century this district was the centre of the Chandel kingdom, with its capital at Mahoba. The rajas adorned the town with many splendid edifices, remains of which still exist, besides constructing the noble artificial lakes already described. At the end of the 12th century Mahoba fell into the hands of the Mussulmans. In 1680 the district was conquered by Chhatar Sal, the hero of the Bundelas, who assigned at his death one-third of his dominions to his ally the peshwa of the Mahrattas. Until Bundelkhand became British territory in 1803 there was constant warfare between the Bundela princes and the Mahratta chieftains. On the outbreak of the Mutiny in 1857, Hamirpur was the scene of a fierce rebellion, and all the principal towns were plundered by the surrounding chiefs. After a short period of desultory guerrilla warfare the rebels were effectually quelled and the work of reorganization began. The district has since been subject to cycles of varying agricultural prosperity.

HAMITIC RACES AND LANGUAGES. The questions involved in a consideration of Hamitic races and Hamitic languages are independent of one another and call for separate treatment.

I. Hamitic Races.—The term Hamitic as applied to race is not only extremely vague but has been much abused by anthropological writers. Of the few who have attempted a precise definition the most prominent is Sergi,1 and his classification may be taken as representing one point of view with regard to this difficult question.

Sergi considers the Hamites, using the term in the racial sense, as a branch of his “Mediterranean Race”; and divides them as follows:—

1. Eastern Branch—

(a) Ancient and Modern Egyptian (excluding the Arabs).

(b) Nubians, Beja.

(c) Abyssinians.

(d) Galla, Danakil, Somali.

(e) Masai.

(f) Wahuma or Watusi.

2. Northern Branch—

(a) Berbers of the Mediterranean, Atlantic and Sahara.

(b) Tibbu.

(c) Fula.

(d) Guanches (extinct).

With regard to this classification the following conclusions may be regarded as comparatively certain: that the members of groups d, e and f of the first branch appear to be closely inter-connected by ties of blood, and also the members of the second branch. The Abyssinians in the south have absorbed a certain amount of Galla blood, but the majority are Semitic or Semito-Negroid. The question of the racial affinities of the Ancient Egyptians and the Beja are still a matter of doubt, and the relation of the two groups to each other is still controversial. Sergi, it is true, arguing from physical data believes that a close connexion exists; but the data are so extremely scanty that the finality of his conclusion may well be doubted. His “Northern Branch” corresponds with the more satisfactory term “Libyan Race,” represented in fair purity by the Berbers, and, mixed with Negro elements, by the Fula and Tibbu. This Libyan race is distinctively a white race, with dark curly hair; the Eastern Hamites are equally distinctively a brown people with frizzy hair. If, as Sergi believes, these brown people are themselves a race, and not a cross between white and black in varying proportions, they are found in their greatest purity among the Somali and Galla, and mixed with Bantu blood among the Ba-Hima (Wahuma) and Watussi. The Masai seem to be as much Nilotic Negro as Hamite. This Galla type does not seem to appear farther north than the southern portion of Abyssinia, and it is not unlikely that the Beja are very early Semitic immigrants with an aboriginal Negroid admixture. It is also possible that they and the Ancient Egyptians may contain a common element. The Nubians appear akin to the Egyptians but with a strong Negroid element.

To return to Sergi’s two branches, besides the differences in skin colour and hair-texture there is also a cultural difference of great importance. The Eastern Hamites are essentially a pastoral people and therefore nomadic or semi-nomadic; the Berbers, who, as said above, are the purest representatives of the Libyans, are agriculturists. The pastoral habits of the Eastern Hamites are of importance, since they show the utmost reluctance to abandon them. Even the Ba-Hima and Watussi, for long settled and partly intermixed with the agricultural Bantu, regard any pursuit but that of cattle-tending as absolutely beneath their dignity.

It would seem therefore that, while sufficient data have not been collected to decide whether, on the evidence of exact anthropological measurements, the Libyans are connected racially with the Eastern Hamites, the testimony derived from broad “descriptive characteristics” and general culture is against such a connexion. To regard the Libyans as Hamites solely on the ground that the languages spoken by the two groups show affinities would be as rash and might be as false as to aver that the present-day Hungarians are Mongolians because Magyar is an Asiatic tongue. Regarding the present state of knowledge it would be safer therefore to restrict the term “Hamites” to Sergi’s first group; and call the second by the name “Libyans.” The difficult question of the origin of the ancient Egyptians is discussed elsewhere.

As to the question whether the Hamites in this restricted sense are a definite race or a blend, no discussion can, in view of the paucity of evidence, as yet lead to a satisfactory conclusion, but it might be suggested very tentatively that further researches may possibly connect them with the Dravidian peoples of India. It is sufficient for present purposes that the term Hamite, using it as coextensive with Sergi’s Eastern Hamite, has a definite connotation. By the term is meant a brown people with frizzy hair, of lean and sinewy physique, with slender but muscular arms and legs, a thin straight or even aquiline nose with delicate nostrils, thin lips and no trace of prognathism.

(T. A. J.)

II. Hamitic Languages.—The whole north of Africa was once inhabited by tribes of the Caucasian race, speaking languages which are now generally called, after Genesis x., Hamitic, a term introduced principally by Friedrich Müller. The linguistic coherence of that race has been broken up especially by the intrusion of Arabs, whose language has exercised a powerful influence on all those nations. This splitting up, and the immense distances over which those tribes were spread, have made those languages diverge more widely than do the various tongues of the Indo-European stock, but still their affinity can easily be traced by the linguist, and is, perhaps, greater than the corresponding anthropologic similarity between the white Libyan, red Galla and swarthy Somali. The relationship of these languages to Semitic has long been noticed, but was at first taken for descent from Semitic (cf. the name “Syro-Arabian” proposed by Prichard). Now linguists are agreed that the Proto-Semites and Proto-Hamites once formed a unity, probably in Arabia. That original unity has been demonstrated especially by Friedrich Müller (Reise der österreichischen Fregatte Novara, p. 51, more fully, Grundriss der Sprachwissenschaft, vol. iii. fasc. 2, p. 226); cf. also A. H. Sayce, Science of Language, ii. 178; R. N. Cust, The Modern Languages of Africa, i. 94, &c. The comparative grammars of Semitic (W. Wright, 1890, and especially H. Zimmern, 1898) demonstrate this now to everybody by comparative tables of the grammatical elements.

The classification of Hamitic languages is as follows:2—

1. The Libyan Dialects (mostly misnamed “Berber languages,” after an unfortunate, vague Arabic designation, barābra, “people of foreign language”). The representatives of this large group extend from the Senegal river (where they are called Zenaga; imperfect Grammaire by L. Faidherbe, 1877) and from Timbuktu (dialect of the Auelimmiden, sketched by Heinrich Barth, Travels, vol. v., 1857) to the oases of Aujila (Bengazi) and of Siwa on the western border of Egypt. Consequently, these “dialects” differ more strongly from each other than, e.g. the Semitic languages do between themselves. The purest representative seems to be the language of the Algerian mountaineers (Kabyles), especially that of the Zuawa (Zouaves) tribe, described by A. Hanoteau, Essai de grammaire kabyle (1858); Ben Sedira, Cours de langue kab. (1887); Dictionnaire by Olivier (1878). The learned little Manuel de langue kabyle, by R. Basset (1887) is an introduction to the study of the many dialects with full bibliography, cf. also Basset’s Notes de lexicographie berbère (1883 foll.). (The dictionaries by Brosselard and Venture de Paradis are imperfect.) The best now described is Shilḥ(a). a Moroccan dialect (H. Stumme, Handbuch des Schilhischen, 1899), but it is an inferior dialect. That of Ghat in Tripoli underlies the Grammar of F. W. Newman (1845) and the Grammaire Tamashek of Hanoteau (1860); cf. also the Dictionnaire of Cid Kaoui (1900). Neither medieval reports on the language spoken by the Guanches of the Canary Islands (fullest in A. Berthelot, Antiquités canariennes, 1879; akin to Shilha; by no means primitive Libyan untouched by Arabic), nor the modern dialect of Siwa (still little known; tentative grammar by Basset, 1890), have justified hopes of finding a pure Libyan dialect. Of a few literary attempts in Arabic letters the religious Poème de Çabi (ed. Basset, Journ. asiatique, vii. 476) is the most remarkable. The imperfect native writing (named tifinaghen), a derivation from the Sabaean alphabet (not, as Halévy claimed, from the Punic), still in use among the Sahara tribes, can be traced to the 2nd century B.C. (bilingual inscription of Tucca, &c.; cf. J. Halévy, Essai d’épigraphie libyque, 1875), but hardly ever served for literary uses.

2. The Cushitic or Ethiopian Family.—The nearest relative of Libyan is not Ancient Egyptian but the language of the nomadic Bisharin or Beja of the Nubian Desert (cf. H. Almkvist, Die Bischari Sprache, 1881 [the northern dialect], and L. Reinisch, Die Bedauye Sprache, 1893, Wörterbuch, 1895). The speech of the peoples occupying the lowland east of Abyssinia, the Saho (Reinisch, grammar in Zeitschrift d. deutschen morgenländ. Gesellschaft, 32, 1878; Texte, 1889; Wörterbuch, 1890; cf. also Reinisch, Die Sprache der Irob Saho, 1878), and the Afar or Danakil (Reinisch, Die Afar Sprache, 1887; G. Colizza, Lingua Afar, 1887), merely dialects of one language, form the connecting link with the southern Hamitic group, i.e. Somali (Reinisch, Somali Sprache, 1900-1903, 3 vols.; Larajasse und de Sampont, Practical Grammar of the Somali Language, 1897; imperfect sketches by Hunter, 1880, and Schleicher, 1890), and Galla (L. Tutscheck, Grammar, 1845, Lexicon, 1844; Massaja, Lectiones, 1877; G. F. F. Praetorius, Zur Grammatik der Gallasprache, 1893, &c.). All these Cushitic languages, extending from Egypt to the equator, are separated by Reinisch as Lower Cushitic from the High Cushitic group, i.e. the many dialects spoken by tribes dwelling in the Abyssinian highlands or south of Abyssinia. Of the original inhabitants of Abyssinia, called collectively Agâu (or Agâu) by the Abyssinians, or Falashas (this name principally for Jewish tribes), Reinisch considers the Bilin or Bogos tribe as preserving the most archaic dialect (Die Bilin Sprache, Texts, 1883; Grammatik, 1882; Wörterbuch, 1887); the same scholar gave sketches of the Khamir (1884) and Quara (1885) dialects. On other dialects, struggling against the spreading Semitic tongues (Tigré, Amharic, &c.), see Conti Rossini, “Appunti sulla lingua Khamta,” in Giorn. soc. orient. (1905); Waldmeyer, Wörtersammlung (1868); J. Halévy, “Essai sur la langue Agaou” (Actes soc. philologique, 1873), &c. Similar dialects are those of the Sid(d)âma tribes, south of Abyssinia, of which only Kaf(f)a (Reinisch, Die Kafa Sprache, 1888) is known at all fully. Of the various other dialects (Kullo, Tambaro, &c.), vocabularies only are known; cf. Borelli, Éthiopie méridionale (1890). (On Hausa see below.)

There is no question that the northernmost Hamitic languages have preserved best the original wealth of inflections which reminds us so strongly of the formal riches of southern Semitic. Libyan and Beja are the best-preserved types, and the latter especially may be called the Sanskrit of Hamitic. The other Cushitic tongues exhibit increasing agglutinative tendencies the farther we go south, although single archaisms are found even in Somali. The early isolated High Cushitic tongues (originally branched off from a stock common with Galla and Somali) diverge most strongly from the original type. Already the Agâu dialects are full of very peculiar developments; the Hamitic character of the Sid(d)ama languages can be traced only by lengthy comparisons.

The simple and pretty Haus(s)a language, the commercial language of the whole Niger region and beyond (Schoen, Grammar, 1862, Dictionary, 1876; Charles H. Robinson, 1897, in Robinson and Brookes’s Dictionary) has fairly well preserved its Hamitic grammar, though its vocabulary was much influenced by the surrounding Negro languages. It is no relative of Libyan (though it has experienced some Libyan influences), but comes from the (High ?) Cushitic family; its exact place in this family remains to be determined. Various languages of the Niger region were once Hamitic like Haus(s)a, or at least under some Hamitic influence, but have now lost that character too far to be classified as Hamitic, e.g. the Muzuk or Musgu language (F. Müller, 1886). The often-raised question of some (very remote) relationship between Hamitic and the great Bantu family is still undecided; more doubtful is that with the interesting Ful (a) language in the western Sudan, but a relationship with the Nilotic branch of negro languages is impossible (though a few of these, e.g. Nuba, have borrowed some words from neighbouring Hamitic peoples). The development of a grammatical gender, this principal characteristic of Semito-Hamitic, in Bari and Masai, may be rather accidental than borrowed; certainly, the same phenomenon in Hottentot does not justify the attempt often made to classify this with Hamitic.

3. Ancient Egyptian, as we have seen, does not form the connecting link between Libyan and Cushitic which its geographical position would lead us to expect. It represents a third independent branch, or rather a second one, Libyan and Cushitic forming one division of Hamitic. A few resemblances with Libyan (M. de Rochemonteix in Mémoires du congrès internat. des orientalistes, Paris, 1873; elementary) are less due to original relationship than to the general better preservation of the northern idioms (see above). Frequent attempts to detach Egyptian from Hamitic and to attribute it to a Semitic immigration later than that of the other Hamites cannot be proved. Egyptian is, in many respects, more remote from Semitic than the Libyan-Cushitic division, being more agglutinative than the better types of its sister branch, having lost the most characteristic verbal flection (the Hamito-Semitic imperfect), forming the nominal plural in its own peculiar fashion, &c. The advantage of Egyptian, that it is represented in texts of 3000 B.C., while the sister tongues exist only in forms 5000 years later, allows us, e.g. to trace the Semitic principle of triliteral roots more clearly in Egyptian; but still the latter tongue is hardly more characteristically archaic or nearer Semitic than Beja or Kabylic.

All this is said principally of the grammar. Of the vocabulary it must not be forgotten that none of the Hamitic tongues remained untouched by Semitic influences after the separation of the Hamites and Semites, say 4000 or 6000 B.C. Repeated Semitic immigrations and influences have brought so many layers of loan-words that it is questionable if any modern Hamitic language has now more than 10% of original Hamitic words. Which Semitic resemblances are due to original affinity, which come from pre-Christian immigrations, which from later influences, are difficult questions not yet faced by science; e.g. the half-Arabic numerals of Libyan have often been quoted as a proof of primitive Hamito-Semitic kinship, but they are probably only a gift of some Arab invasion, prehistoric for us. Arab tribes seem to have repeatedly swept over the whole area of the Hamites, long before the time of Mahomet, and to have left deep impressions on races and languages, but none of these migrations stands in the full light of history (not even that of the Gee’z tribes of Abyssinia). Egyptian exhibits constant influences from its Canaanitish neighbours; it is crammed with such loan-words already in 3000 B.C.; new affluxes can be traced, especially c. 1600. (The Punic influences on Libyan are, however, very slight, inferior to the Latin.) Hence the relations of Semitic and Hamitic still require many investigations in detail, for which the works of Reinisch and Basset have merely built up a basis.

(W. M. M.)

1 G. Sergi, The Mediterranean Race. A Study of the Origin of European Peoples (London, 1901); idem. Africa, Antropologia della stirpe camitica (Turin, 1897).

2 Only works of higher linguistic standing are quoted here; many vocabularies and imperfect attempts of travellers cannot be enumerated.

HAMLET, the hero of Shakespeare’s tragedy, a striking figure in Scandinavian romance.

The chief authority for the legend of Hamlet is Saxo Grammaticus, who devotes to it parts of the third and fourth books of his Historia Danica, written at the beginning of the 13th century. It is supposed that the story of Hamlet, Amleth or Amloði,1 was contained in the lost Skjöldunga saga, but we have no means of determining whether Saxo derived his information in this case from oral or written sources. The close parallels between the tale of Hamlet and the English romances of Havelok, Horn and Bevis of Hampton make it not unlikely that Hamlet is of British rather than of Scandinavian origin. His name does in fact occur in the Irish Annals of the Four Masters (ed. O’Donovan, 1851) in a stanza attributed to the Irish Queen Gormflaith, who laments the death of her husband, Niall Glundubh, at the hands of Amhlaiðe in 919 at the battle of Ath-Cliath. The slayer of Niall Glundubh is by other authorities stated to have been Sihtric. Now Sihtric was the father of that Olaf or Anlaf Cuaran who was the prototype of the English Havelok, but nowhere else does he receive the nickname of Amhlaiðe. If Amhlaiðe may really be identified with Sihtric, who first went to Dublin in 888, the relations between the tales of Havelok and Hamlet are readily explicable, since nothing was more likely than that the exploits of father and son should be confounded (see Havelok). But, whoever the historic Hamlet may have been, it is quite certain that much was added that was extraneous to Scandinavian tradition. Later in the 10th century there is evidence of the existence of an Icelandic saga of Amlóði or Amleth in a passage from the poet Snaebjorn in the second part of the prose Edda.2 According to Saxo,3 Hamlet’s history is briefly as follows. In the days of Rorik, king of Denmark, Gervendill was governor of Jutland, and was succeeded by his sons Horvendill and Feng. Horvendill, on his return from a Viking expedition in which he had slain Koll, king of Norway, married Gerutha, Rorik’s daughter, who bore him a son Amleth. But Feng, out of jealousy, murdered Horvendill, and persuaded Gerutha to become his wife, on the plea that he had committed the crime for no other reason than to avenge her of a husband by whom she had been hated. Amleth, afraid of sharing his father’s fate, pretended to be imbecile, but the suspicion of Feng put him to various tests which are related in detail. Among other things they sought to entangle him with a young girl, his foster-sister, but his cunning saved him. When, however, Amleth slew the eavesdropper hidden, like Polonius, in his mother’s room, and destroyed all trace of the deed, Feng was assured that the young man’s madness was feigned. Accordingly he despatched him to England in company with two attendants, who bore a letter enjoining the king of the country to put him to death. Amleth surmised the purport of their instructions, and secretly altered the message on their wooden tablets to the effect that the king should put the attendants to death and give Amleth his daughter in marriage. After marrying the princess Amleth returned at the end of a year to Denmark. Of the wealth he had accumulated he took with him only certain hollow sticks filled with gold. He arrived in time for a funeral feast, held to celebrate his supposed death. During the feast he plied the courtiers with wine, and executed his vengeance during their drunken sleep by fastening down over them the woollen hangings of the hall with pegs he had sharpened during his feigned madness, and then setting fire to the palace. Feng he slew with his own sword. After a long harangue to the people he was proclaimed king. Returning to England for his wife he found that his father-in-law and Feng had been pledged each to avenge the other’s death. The English king, unwilling personally to carry out his pledge, sent Amleth as proxy wooer for the hand of a terrible Scottish queen Hermuthruda, who had put all former wooers to death, but fell in love with Amleth. On his return to England his first wife, whose love proved stronger than her resentment, told him of her father’s intended revenge. In the battle which followed Amleth won the day by setting up the dead men of the day before with stakes, and thus terrifying the enemy. He then returned with his two wives to Jutland, where he had to encounter the enmity of Wiglek, Rorik’s successor. He was slain in a battle against Wiglek, and Hermuthruda, although she had engaged to die with him, married the victor.

The other Scandinavian versions of the tale are: the Hrolfssaga Kraka,4 where the brothers Helgi and Hroar take the place of the hero; the tale of Harald and Halfdan, as related in the 7th book of Saxo Grammaticus; the modern Icelandic Ambales Saga,5 a romantic tale the earliest MS. of which dates from the 17th century; and the folk-tale of Brjám6 which was put in writing in 1707. Helgi and Hroar, like Harald and Halfdan, avenge their father’s death on their uncle by burning him in his palace. Harald and Halfdan escape after their father’s death by being brought up, with dogs’ names, in a hollow oak, and subsequently by feigned madness; and in the case of the other brothers there are traces of a similar motive, since the boys are called by dogs’ names. The methods of Hamlet’s madness, as related by Saxo, seem to point to cynanthropy. In the Ambales Saga, which perhaps is collateral to, rather than derived from, Saxo’s version, there are, besides romantic additions, some traits which point to an earlier version of the tale.

Saxo Grammaticus was certainly familiar with the Latin historians, and it is most probable that, recognizing the similarity between the northern Hamlet legend and the classical tale of Lucius Junius Brutus as told by Livy, by Valerius Maximus, and by Dionysius of Halicarnassus (with which he was probably acquainted through a Latin epitome), he deliberately added circumstances from the classical story. The incident of the gold-filled sticks could hardly appear fortuitously in both, and a comparison of the harangues of Amleth (Saxo, Book iv.) and of Brutus (Dionysius iv. 77) shows marked similarities. In both tales the usurping uncle is ultimately succeeded by the nephew who has escaped notice during his youth by a feigned madness. But the parts played by the personages who in Shakespeare became Ophelia and Polonius, the method of revenge, and the whole narrative of Amleth’s adventure in England, have no parallels in the Latin story.

Dr. O. L. Jiriczek7 first pointed out the striking similarities existing between the story of Amleth in Saxo and the other northern versions, and that of Kei Chosro in the Shahnameh (Book of the King) of the Persian poet Firdausi. The comparison was carried farther by R. Zenker (Boeve Amlethus, pp. 207-268, Berlin and Leipzig, 1904), who even concluded that the northern saga rested on an earlier version of Firdausi’s story, in which indeed nearly all the individual elements of the various northern versions are to be found. Further resemblances exist in the Ambales Saga with the tales of Bellerophon, of Heracles, and of Servius Tullius. That Oriental tales through Byzantine and Arabian channels did find their way to the west is well known, and there is nothing very surprising in their being attached to a local hero.

The tale of Hamlet’s adventures in Britain forms an episode so distinct that it was at one time referred to a separate hero. The traitorous letter, the purport of which is changed by Hermuthruda, occurs in the popular Dit de l’empereur Constant,8 and in Arabian and Indian tales. Hermuthruda’s cruelty to her wooers is common in northern and German mythology, and close parallels are afforded by Thrytho, the terrible bride of Offa I., who figures in Beowulf, and by Brunhilda in the Nibelungenlied.

The story of Hamlet was known to the Elizabethans in François de Belleforest’s Histoires tragiques (1559), and found its supreme expression in Shakespeare’s tragedy. That as early as 1587 or 1589 Hamlet had appeared on the English stage is shown by Nash’s preface to Greene’s Menaphon: “He will afford you whole Hamlets, I should say, handfulls of tragical speeches.” The Shakespearian Hamlet owes, however, little but the outline of his story to Saxo. In character he is diametrically opposed to his prototype. Amleth’s madness was certainly altogether feigned; he prepared his vengeance a year beforehand, and carried it out deliberately and ruthlessly at every point. His riddling speech has little more than an outward similarity to the words of Hamlet, who resembles him, however, in his disconcerting penetration into his enemies’ plans. For a discussion of Shakespeare’s play and its immediate sources see Shakespeare.

See an appendix to Elton’s trans. of Saxo Grammaticus; I. Gollancz, Hamlet in Iceland (London, 1898); H. L. Ward, Catalogue of Romances, under “Havelok,” vol. i. pp. 423 seq.; English Historical Review, x. (1895); F. Detter, “Die Hamletsage,” Zeitschr. f. deut. Alter. vol. 36 (Berlin, 1892); O. L. Jiriczek, “Die Amlethsage auf Island,” in Germanistische Abhandlungen, vol. xii. (Breslau), and “Hamlet in Iran,” in Zeitschr. des Vereins für Volkskunde, x. (Berlin, 1900); A. Olrik, Kilderne til Sakses Oldhistorie (Copenhagen, 2 vols., 1892-1894).

1 The word is used in modern Icelandic metaphorically of an imbecile or weak-minded person (see Cleasby and Vigfússon, Icelandic-English Dictionary, 1869).

2 “’Tis said that far out, off yonder ness, the Nine Maids of the Island Mill stir amain the host—cruel skerry-quern—they who in ages past ground Hamlet’s meal. The good Chieftain furrows the hull’s lair with his ship’s beaked prow.” This passage may be compared with some examples of Hamlet’s cryptic sayings quoted by Saxo: “Again, as he passed along the beach, his companions found the rudder of a ship which had been wrecked, and said they had discovered a huge knife. ‘This,’ said he, ‘was the right thing to carve such a huge ham....’ Also, as they passed the sand-hills, and bade him look at the meal, meaning the sand, he replied that it had been ground small by the hoary tempests of the ocean.”

3 Books iii. and iv., chaps. 86-106, Eng. trans. by O. Elton (London, 1894).

4 Printed in Fornaldar Sögur Norðtrlanda (vol. i. Copenhagen, 1829), analysed by F. Detter in Zeitschr. für deutsches Altertum (vol. 36, Berlin, 1892).

5 Printed with English translation and with other texts germane to the subject by I. Gollancz (Hamlet in Iceland, London, 1898).

6 Professor I. Gollancz points out (p. lxix.) that Brjám is a variation of the Irish Brian, that the relations between Ireland and the Norsemen were very close, and that, curiously enough, Brian Boroimhe was the hero of that very battle of Clontarf (1014) where the device (which occurs in Havelok and Hamlet) of bluffing the enemy by tying the wounded to stakes to represent active soldiers was used.

7 “Hamlet in Iran,” in Zeitschrift des Vereins für Volkskunde, x. (Berlin, 1900).

8 See A. B. Gough, The Constance Saga (Berlin, 1902).

HAMLEY, SIR EDWARD BRUCE (1824-1893), British general and military writer, youngest son of Vice-Admiral William Hamley, was born on the 27th of April 1824 at Bodmin, Cornwall, and entered the Royal Artillery in 1843. He was promoted captain in 1850, and in 1851 went to Gibraltar, where he commenced his literary career by contributing articles to magazines. He served throughout the Crimean campaign as aide-de-camp to Sir Richard Dacres, commanding the artillery, taking part in all the operations with distinction, and becoming successively major and lieutenant-colonel by brevet. He also received the C.B. and French and Turkish orders. During the war he contributed to Blackwood’s Magazine an admirable account of the progress of the campaign, which was afterwards republished. The combination in Hamley of literary and military ability secured for him in 1859 the professorship of military history at the new Staff College at Sandhurst, from which in 1866 he went to the council of military education, returning in 1870 to the Staff College as commandant. From 1879 to 1881 he was British commissioner successively for the delimitation of the frontiers of Turkey and Bulgaria, Turkey in Asia and Russia, and Turkey and Greece, and was rewarded with the K.C.M.G. Promoted colonel in 1863, he became a lieutenant-general in 1882, when he commanded the 2nd division of the expedition to Egypt under Lord Wolseley, and led his troops in the battle of Tell-el-Kebir, for which he received the K.C.B., the thanks of parliament, and 2nd class of Osmanieh. Hamley considered that his services in Egypt had been insufficiently recognized in Lord Wolseley’s despatches, and expressed his indignation freely, but he had no sufficient ground for supposing that there was any intention to belittle his services. From 1885 until his death on the 12th of August 1893 he represented Birkenhead in parliament in the Conservative interest.

Hamley was a clever and versatile writer. His principal work, The Operations of War, published in 1867, became a text-book of military instruction. He published some pamphlets on national defence, was a frequent contributor to magazines, and the author of several novels, of which perhaps the best known is Lady Lee’s Widowhood.

HAMLIN, HANNIBAL (1809-1891), vice-president of the United States (1861-1865), was born at Paris, Maine, on the 27th of August 1809. After studying in Hebron Academy, he conducted his father’s farm for a time, became schoolmaster, and later managed a weekly newspaper at Paris. He then studied law, was admitted to the bar in 1833, and rapidly acquired a reputation as an able lawyer and a good public speaker. Entering politics as an anti-slavery Democrat, he was a member of the state House of Representatives in 1836-1840, serving as its presiding officer during the last four years. He was a representative in Congress from 1843 to 1847, and was a member of the United States Senate from 1848 to 1856. From the very beginning of his service in Congress he was prominent as an opponent of the extension of slavery; he was a conspicuous supporter of the Wilmot Proviso, spoke against the Compromise Measures of 1850, and in 1856, chiefly because of the passage in 1854 of the Kansas-Nebraska Bill, which repealed the Missouri Compromise, and his party’s endorsement of that repeal at the Cincinnati Convention two years later, he withdrew from the Democrats and joined the newly organized Republican party. The Republicans of Maine nominated him for governor in the same year, and having carried the election by a large majority he was inaugurated in this office on the 8th of January 1857. In the latter part of February, however, he resigned the governorship, and was again a member of the Senate from 1857 to January 1861. From 1861 to 1865, during the Civil War, he was Vice-President of the United States. While in this office he was one of the chief advisers of President Lincoln, and urged both the Emancipation Proclamation and the arming of the negroes. After the war he again served in the Senate (1869-1881), was minister to Spain (1881-1883), and then retired from public life. He died at Bangor, Maine, on the 4th of July 1891.

See Life and Times of Hannibal Hamlin (Cambridge, Mass., 1899), by C. E. Hamlin, his grandson.

HAMM, a town of Germany, in the Prussian province of Westphalia, on the Lippe, 19 m. by rail N.E. from Dortmund on the main line Cologne-Hanover. Pop. (1905) 38,430. It is surrounded by pleasant promenades occupying the site of the former engirdling fortifications. The principal buildings are four Roman Catholic and three Evangelical churches, several schools and an infirmary. The town is flourishing and rapidly increasing, and possesses very extensive wire factories (in connexion with which there are puddling and rolling works), machine works, and manufactories of gloves, baskets, leather, starch, chemicals, varnish, oil and beer. Near the town are some thermal baths.

Hamm, which became a town about the end of the 12th century, was originally the capital of the countship of Mark, and was fortified in 1226. It became a member of the Hanseatic League. In 1614 it was besieged by the Dutch, and it was several times taken and retaken during the Thirty Years’ War. In 1666 it came into the possession of Brandenburg. In 1761 and 1762 it was bombarded by the French, and in 1763 its fortifications were dismantled.

HAMMĀD AR-RĀWIYA [Abū-l-Qāsim Ḥammād ibn Abī Laila Sāpūr (or ibn Maisara)] (8th century A.D.), Arabic scholar, was of Dailamite descent, but was born in Kufa. The date of his birth is given by some as 694, by others as 714. He was reputed to be the most learned man of his time in regard to the “days of the Arabs” (i.e. their chief battles), their stories, poems, genealogies and dialects. He is said to have boasted that he could recite a hundred long qasīdas for each letter of the alphabet (i.e. rhyming in each letter) and these all from pre-Islamic times, apart from shorter pieces and later verses. Hence his name Hammad ar-Rawiya, “the reciter of verses from memory.” The Omayyad caliph Walīd is said to have tested him, the result being that he recited 2900 qasīdas of pre-Islamic date and Walīd gave him 100,000 dirhems. He was favoured by Yazīd II. and his successor Hishām, who brought him up from Irak to Damascus. Arabian critics, however, say that in spite of his learning he lacked a true insight into the genius of the Arabic language, and that he made more than thirty—some say three hundred—mistakes of pronunciation in reciting the Koran. To him is ascribed the collecting of the Mo‘allakāt (q.v.). No diwan of his is extant, though he composed verse of his own and probably a good deal of what he ascribed to earlier poets.

Biography in McG. de Slane’s trans. of Ibn Khallikān, vol. i. pp. 470-474, and many stories are told of him in the Kitāb ul-Aghāni, vol. v. pp. 164-175.

(G. W. T.)

HAMMER, FRIEDRICH JULIUS (1810-1862), German poet, was born on the 7th of June 1810 at Dresden. In 1831 he went to Leipzig to study law, but devoted himself mainly to philosophy and belles lettres. Returning to Dresden in 1834 a small comedy, Das seltsame Frühstück, introduced him to the literary society of the capital, notably to Ludwig Tieck, and from this time he devoted himself entirely to writing. In 1837 he returned to Leipzig, and, coming again to Dresden, from 1851 to 1859 edited the feuilleton of Sächsische konstitutionelle Zeitung, and took the lead in the foundation in 1855 of the Schiller Institute in Dresden. His marriage in 1851 had made him independent, and he bought a small property at Pillnitz, on which, soon after his return from a residence of several years at Nuremberg, he died, on the 23rd of August 1862.

Hammer wrote, besides several comedies, a drama Die Brüder (1856), a number of unimportant romances, and the novel Einkehr und Umkehr (Leipzig, 1856); but his reputation rests upon his epigrammatic and didactic poems. His Schau’ um dich, und schau’ in dich (1851), which made his name, has passed through more than thirty editions. It was followed by Zu allen guten Stunden (1854), Fester Grund (1857), Auf stillen Wegen (1859), and Lerne, liebe, lebe (1862). Besides these he wrote a book of Turkish songs, Unter dem Halbmond (Leipzig, 1860), and rhymed versions of the psalms (1861), and compiled the popular religious anthology Leben und Heimat in Gott, of which a 14th edition was published in 1900.

See C. G. E. Am Ende, Julius Hammer (Nuremberg, 1872).

HAMMER, an implement consisting of a shaft or handle with head fixed transversely to it. The head, usually of metal, has one flat face, the other may be shaped to serve various purposes, e.g. with a claw, a pick, &c. The implement is used for breaking, beating, driving nails, rivets, &c., and the word is applied to heavy masses of metal moved by machinery, and used for similar purposes. (See Tool.) “Hammer” is a word common to Teutonic languages. It appears in the same form in German and Danish, and in Dutch as hamer, in Swedish as hammare. The ultimate origin is unknown. It has been connected with the root seen in the Greek κάμπτειν, to bend; the word would mean, therefore, something crooked or bent. A more illuminating suggestion connects the word with the Slavonic kamy, a stone, cf. Russian kamen, and ultimately with Sanskrit acman, a pointed stone, a thunderbolt. The legend of Thor’s hammer, the thunderbolt, and the probability of the primitive hammer being a stone, adds plausibility to this derivation. The word is applied to many objects resembling a hammer in shape or function. Thus the “striker” in a clock, or in a bell, when it is sounded by an independent lever and not by the swinging of the “tongue,” is called a “hammer”; similarly, in the “action” of a pianoforte the word is used of a wooden shank with felt-covered head attached to a key, the striking of which throws the “hammer” against the strings. In the mechanism of a fire-arm, the “hammer” is that part which by its impact on the cap or primer explodes the charge. (See Gun.) The hammer, more usually known by its French name of martel de fer, was a medieval hand-weapon. With a long shaft it was used by infantry, especially when acting against mounted troops. With a short handle and usually made altogether of metal, it was also used by horse-soldiers. The martel had one part of the head with a blunted face, the other pointed, but occasionally both sides were pointed. There are 16th century examples in which a hand-gun forms the handle. The name of “hammer,” in Latin malleus, has been frequently applied to men, and also to books, with reference to destructive power. Thus on the tomb of Edward I. in Westminster Abbey is inscribed his name of Scotorum Malleus, the “Hammer of the Scots.” The title of “Hammer of Heretics,” Malleus Haereticorum, has been given to St Augustine and to Johann Faber, whose tract against Luther is also known by the name. Thomas Cromwell was styled Malleus Monachorum. The famous text-book of procedure in cases of witchcraft, published by Sprenger and Krämer in 1489, was called Hexenhammer or Malleus Maleficarum (see Witchcraft).

The origin of the word “hammer-cloth,” an ornamental cloth covering the box-seat on a state-coach, has been often explained from the hammer and other tools carried in the box-seat by the coachman for repairs, &c. The New English Dictionary points out that while the word occurs as early as 1465, the use of a box-seat is not known before the 17th century. Other suggestions are that it is a corruption of “hamper-cloth,” or of “hammock-cloth,” which is used in this sense, probably owing to a mistake. Neither of these supposed corruptions helps very much. Skeat connects the word with a Dutch word hemel, meaning a canopy. In the name of the bird, the yellow-hammer, the latter part should be “ammer.” This appears in the German name, Emmerling, and the word probably means the “chirper,” cf. the Ger. jammern, to wail, lament.

HAMMERBEAM ROOF, in architecture, the name given to a Gothic open timber roof, of which the finest example is that over Westminster Hall (1395-1399). In order to give greater height in the centre, the ordinary tie beam is cut through, and the portions remaining, known as hammerbeams, are supported by curved braces from the wall; in Westminster Hall, in order to give greater strength to the framing, a large arched piece of timber is carried across the hall, rising from the bottom of the wall piece to the centre of the collar beam, the latter being also supported by curved braces rising from the end of the hammerbeam. The span of Westminster Hall is 68 ft. 4 in., and the opening between the ends of the hammerbeams 25 ft. 6 in. The height from the paving of the hall to the hammerbeam is 40 ft., and to the underside of the collar beam 63 ft. 6 in., so that an additional height in the centre of 23 ft. 6 in. has been gained. Other important examples of hammerbeam roofs exist over the halls of Hampton Court and Eltham palaces, and there are numerous examples of smaller dimensions in churches throughout England and particularly in the eastern counties. The ends of the hammerbeams are usually decorated with winged angels holding shields; the curved braces and beams are richly moulded, and the spandrils in the larger examples filled in with tracery, as in Westminster Hall. Sometimes, but rarely, the collar beam is similarly treated, or cut through and supported by additional curved braces, as in the hall of the Middle Temple, London.

HAMMERFEST, the most northern town in Europe. Pop. (1900) 2300. It is situated on an island (Kvalö) off the N.W. coast of Norway, in Finmarken amt (county), in 70° 40′ 11″ N., the latitude being that of the extreme north of Alaska. Its position affords the best illustration of the warm climatic influence of the north-eastward Atlantic drift, the mean annual temperature being 36° F. (January 31°, July 57°). Hammerfest is 674 m. by sea N.E. of Trondhjem, and 78 S.W. from the North Cape. The character of this coast differs from the southern, the islands being fewer and larger, and of table shape. The narrow strait Strömmen separates Kvalö from the larger Seiland, whose snow-covered hills with several glaciers rise above 3500 ft., while an insular rampart of mountains, Sorö, protects the strait and harbour from the open sea. The town is timber-built and modern; and the Protestant church, town-hall, and schools were all rebuilt after fire in 1890. There is also a Roman Catholic church. The sun does not set at Hammerfest from the 13th of May to the 29th of July. This is the busy season of the townsfolk. Vessels set out to the fisheries, as far as Spitsbergen and the Kara Sea; and trade is brisk, not only Norwegian and Danish but British, German and particularly Russian vessels engaging in it. Cod-liver oil and salted fish are exported with some reindeer-skins, fox-skins and eiderdown; and coal and salt for curing are imported. In the spring the great herds of tame reindeer are driven out to swim Strömmen and graze in the summer pastures of Seiland; towards winter they are called home again. From the 18th of November to the 23rd of January the sun is not seen, and the enforced quiet of winter prevails. Electric light was introduced in the town in 1891. On the Fuglenaes or Birds’ Cape, which protects the harbour on the north, there stands a column with an inscription in Norse and Latin, stating that Hammerfest was one of the stations of the expedition for the measurement of the arc of the meridian in 1816-1852. Nor is this its only association with science; for it was one of the spots chosen by Sir Edward Sabine for his series of pendulum experiments in 1823. The ascent of the Sadlen or the Tyven in the neighbourhood is usually undertaken by travellers for the view of the barren, snow-clad Arctic landscape, the bluff indented coast, and the vast expanse of the Arctic Ocean.

HAMMER-KOP, or Hammerhead, an African bird, which has been regarded as a stork and as a heron, the Scopus umbretta of ornithologists, called the “Umbre” by T. Pennant, now placed in a separate family Scopidae between the herons and storks. It was discovered by M. Adanson, the French traveller, in Senegal about the middle of the 19th century, and was described by M. J. Brisson in 1760. It has since been found to inhabit nearly the whole of Africa and Madagascar, and is the “hammerkop” (hammerhead) of the Cape colonists. Though not larger than a raven, it builds an enormous nest, some six feet in diameter, with a flat-topped roof and a small hole for entrance and exit, and placed either on a tree or a rocky ledge. The bird, of an almost uniform brown colour, slightly glossed with purple and its tail barred with black, has a long occipital crest, generally borne horizontally, so as to give rise to its common name. It is somewhat sluggish by day, but displays much activity at dusk, when it will go through a series of strange performances.

(A. N.)

HAMMER-PURGSTALL, JOSEPH, Freiherr von (1774-1856), Austrian orientalist, was born at Graz on the 9th of June 1774, the son of Joseph Johann von Hammer, and received his early education mainly in Vienna. Entering the diplomatic service in 1796, he was appointed in 1799 to a position in the Austrian embassy in Constantinople, and in this capacity he took part in the expedition under Admiral Sir William Sidney Smith and General Sir John Hely Hutchinson against the French. In 1807 he returned home from the East, after which he was made a privy councillor, and, on inheriting in 1835 the estates of the countess Purgstall in Styria, was given the title of “freiherr.” In 1847 he was elected president of the newly-founded academy, and he died at Vienna on the 23rd of November 1856.

For fifty years Hammer-Purgstall wrote incessantly on the most diverse subjects and published numerous texts and translations of Arabic, Persian and Turkish authors. It was natural that a scholar who traversed so large a field should lay himself open to the criticism of specialists, and he was severely handled by Friedrich Christian Diez (1794-1876), who, in his Unfug und Betrug (1815), devoted to him nearly 600 pages of abuse. Von Hammer-Purgstall did for Germany the same work that Sir William Jones (q.v.) did for England and Silvestre de Sacy for France. He was, like his younger but greater English contemporary, Edward William Lane, with whom he came into friendly conflict on the subject of the origin of The Thousand and One Nights, an assiduous worker, and in spite of many faults did more for oriental studies than most of his critics put together.

Von Hammer’s principal work is his Geschichte des osmanischen Reiches (10 vols., Pesth, 1827-1835). Another edition of this was published at Pesth in 1834-1835, and it has been translated into French by J. J. Hellert (1835-1843). Among his other works are Constantinopolis und der Bosporos (1822); Sur les origines russes (St Petersburg, 1825); Geschichte der osmanischen Dichtkunst (1836); Geschichte der Goldenen Horde in Kiptschak (1840); Geschichte der Chane der Krim (1856); and an unfinished Litteraturgeschichte der Araber (1850-1856). His Geschichte der Assassinen (1818) has been translated into English by O. C. Wood (1835). Texts and translations—Eth-Thaālabi, Arab. and Ger. (1829); Ibn Wahshiyah, History of the Mongols, Arab. and Eng. (1806); El-Wassāf, Pers. and Ger. (1856); Esch-Schebistani’s Rosenflor des Geheimnisses, Pers. and Ger. (1838); Ez-Zamakhsheri, Goldene Halsbānder, Arab. and Germ. (1835); El-Ghazzālī, Hujjet-el-Islám, Arab. and Ger. (1838); El-Hamawi, Das arab. Hohe Lied der Liebe, Arab. and Ger. (1854). Translations of—El-Mutanebbi’s Poems; Er-Resmi’s Account of his Embassy (1809); Contes inédits des 1001 nuits (1828). Besides these and smaller works, von Hammer contributed numerous essays and criticisms to the Fundgruben des Orients, which he edited; to the Journal asiatique; and to many other learned journals; above all to the Transactions of the “Akademie der Wissenschaften” of Vienna, of which he was mainly the founder; and he translated Evliya Effendi’s Travels in Europe, for the English Oriental Translation Fund. For a fuller list of his works, which amount in all to nearly 100 volumes, see Comptes rendus of the Acad. des Inscr. et des Belles-Lettres (1857). See also Schlottman, Joseph von Hammer-Purgstall (Zurich, 1857).

HAMMERSMITH, a western metropolitan borough of London, England, bounded E. by Kensington and S. by Fulham and the river Thames, and extending N. and W. to the boundary of the county of London. Pop. (1901) 112,239. The name appears in the early forms of Hermodewode and Hamersmith; the derivation is probably from the Anglo-Saxon, signifying the place with a haven (hythe). Hammersmith is mentioned with Fulham as a winter camp of Danish invaders in 879, when they occupied the island of Hame, which may be identified with Chiswick Eyot. Hammersmith consists of residential streets of various classes. There are many good houses in the districts of Brook Green in the south-east, and Ravenscourt Park and Starch Green in the west. Shepherd’s Bush in the east is a populous and poorer quarter. Boat-building yards, lead-mills, oil mills, distilleries, coach factories, motor works, and other industrial establishments are found along the river and elsewhere in the borough. The main thoroughfares are Uxbridge Road and Goldhawk Road, from Acton on the west, converging at Shepherd’s Bush and continuing towards Notting Hill; King Street from Chiswick on the south-west, continued as Hammersmith Broadway and Road to Kensington Road; Bridge Road from Hammersmith Bridge over the Thames, and Fulham Palace Road from Fulham, converging at the Broadway. Old Hammersmith Bridge, designed by Tierney Clark (1824), was the earliest suspension bridge erected near London. This bridge was found insecure and replaced in 1884-1887. Until 1834 Hammersmith formed part of Fulham parish. Its church of St Paul was built as a chapel of ease to Fulham, and consecrated by Laud in 1631. The existing building dates from 1890. Among the old monuments preserved is that of Sir Nicholas Crispe (d. 1665), a prominent royalist during the civil wars and a benefactor of the parish. Schools and religious houses are numerous. St Paul’s school is one of the principal public schools in England. It was founded in or about 1509 by John Colet, dean of St Paul’s, under the shadow of the cathedral church. But it appears that Colet actually refounded and reorganized a school which had been attached to the cathedral of St Paul from very early times; the first mention of such a school dates from the early part of the 12th century (see an article in The Times, London, July 7, 1909, on the occasion of the celebration of the quatercentenary of Colet’s foundation). The school was moved to its present site in Hammersmith Road in 1883. The number of foundation scholars, that is, the number for which Colet’s endowment provided, is 153, according to the number of fishes taken in the miraculous draught. The total number of pupils is about 600. The school governors are appointed by the Mercers’ Company (by which body the new site was acquired), and the universities of Oxford, Cambridge and London. Close to the school is St Paul’s preparatory school, and at Brook Green is a girls’ school in connexion with the main school. There are, besides, the Edward Latymer foundation school for boys (1624), part of the income of which is devoted to general charitable purposes; the Godolphin school, founded in the 16th century and remodelled as a grammar school in 1861; Nazareth House of Little Sisters of the Poor, the Convent of the Sacred Heart, and other convents. The town hall, the West London hospital with its post-graduate college, and Wormwood Scrubbs prison are noteworthy buildings. Other institutions are the Hammersmith school of art and a Roman Catholic training college. Besides the picturesque Ravenscourt Park (31 acres) there are extensive recreation grounds in the north of the borough at Wormwood Scrubbs (193 acres), and others of lesser extent. An important place of entertainment is Olympia, near Hammersmith Road and the Addison Road station on the West London railway, which includes a vast arena under a glass roof; while at Shepherd’s Bush are the extensive grounds and buildings first occupied by the Franco-British Exhibition of 1908, including a huge stadium for athletic displays. In the extreme north of the borough is the Kensal Green Roman Catholic cemetery, in which Cardinal Manning and many other prominent members of this faith are buried. In the neighbourhood of the Mall, bordering the river, are the house where Thomson wrote his poem “The Seasons,” and Kelmscott House, the residence of William Morris. The parliamentary borough of Hammersmith returns one member. The borough council consists of a mayor, 5 aldermen, and 30 councillors. Area, 2286.3 acres.

HAMMER-THROWING, a branch of field athletics which consists of hurling to the greatest possible distance an instrument with a heavy head and slender handle called the hammer. Throwing the hammer is in all probability of Keltic origin, as it has been popular in Ireland and Scotland for many centuries. The missile was, however, not a hammer, but the wheel of a chariot attached to a fixed axle, by which it was whirled round the head and cast for distance. Such a sport was undoubtedly cultivated in the old Irish games, a large stone being substituted for the wheel at the beginning of the Christian era. In the Scottish highlands the missile took the form of a smith’s sledgehammer, and in this form the sport became popular in England in early days. Edward II. is said to have fostered it, and Henry VIII. is known to have been proficient. At the beginning of the 19th century two standard hammers were generally recognized in Scotland, the heavy hammer, weighing about 21 ℔, and the light hammer, weighing about 16 ℔. These were in general use until about 1885, although the light hammer gradually attained popularity at the expense of the heavy. Although originally an ordinary blacksmith’s sledge with a handle about 3 ft. long, the form of the head was gradually modified until it acquired its present spherical shape, and the stiff wooden handle gave place to one of flexible whalebone about 3⁄8 in. in diameter. The Scottish style of throwing, which also obtained in America, was to stand on a mark, swing the hammer round the head several times and hurl it backwards over the shoulder, the length being measured from the mark made by the falling hammer to the nearest foot of the thrower, no run or follow being allowed. Such men as Donald Dinnie, G. Davidson and Kenneth McRae threw the light hammer over 110 ft., and Dinnie’s record was 132 ft. 8 in., made, however, from a raised mount. Meanwhile the English Amateur Athletic Association had early fixed the weight of the hammer at 16 ℔, but the length of the handle and the run varied widely, the restrictions being few. Under these conditions S. S. Brown, of Oxford, made in 1873 a throw of 120 ft., which was considered extraordinary at the time. In 1875 the throw was made from a 7-ft. circle without run, head and handle of the missile weighing together exactly 16 ℔. In 1887 the circle was enlarged to 9 ft., and in 1896 a handle of flexible metal was legalized. The throw was made after a few rapid revolutions of the body, which added an impetus that greatly added to the distance attained. It thus happened that the Scottish competitors at the English games, who clung to their standing style of throwing, were, although athletes of the very first class, repeatedly beaten; the result being that the Scottish association was forced to introduce the English rules. This was also the case in America, where the throw from the 7-ft. circle, any motions being allowed within it, was adopted in 1888, and still obtains. The Americans still further modified the handle, which now consists of steel wire with two skeleton loops for the hands, the wire being joined to the head by means of a ball-bearing swivel. Thus the greatest mechanical advantage, that of having the entire weight of the missile at the end, as well as the least friction, is obtained. In England the Amateur Athletic Association in 1908 enacted that “the head and handle may be of any size, shape and material, provided that the complete implement shall not be more than 4 ft. and its weight not less than 16 ℔. The competitor may assume any position he chooses, and use either one or both hands. All throws shall be made from a circle 7 ft. in diameter.” The modern hammer-thrower, if right-handed, begins by placing the head on the ground at his right side. He then lifts and swings it round his head with increasing rapidity, his whole body finally revolving with outstretched arms twice, in some cases three times, as rapidly as possible, the hammer being released in the desired direction. During the “spinning,” or revolving of the body, the athlete must be constantly, “ahead of the hammer,” i.e. he must be drawing it after him with continually increased pressure up to the very moment of delivery. The muscles chiefly called into play are those of the shoulders, back and loins. The adoption of the hand-loops has given the thrower greater control over the hammer and has thus rendered the sport much less dangerous than it once was.