VOLUME XIII SLICE VIII Hudson River to Hurstmonceaux (continued 2)
Reading edition
(T. Se.)
HUGLI, or Hooghly, the most westerly and commercially the most important channel by which the Ganges enters the Bay of Bengal. It takes its distinctive name near the town of Santipur, about 120 m. from the sea. The stream now known as the Hugli represents three western deltaic distributaries of the Ganges—viz. (1) the Bhagirathi, (2) the Jalangi and (3) part of the Matabhanga. The Bhagirathi and Jalangi unite at Nadia, above the point of their junction with the lower waters of the Matabhanga, which has taken the name of the Churni before the point of junction and thrown out new distributaries of its own. These three western distributaries are known as the Nadia rivers, and are important, not only as great highways for internal traffic, but also as the headwaters of the Hugli. Like other deltaic distributaries, they are subject to sudden changes in their channels, and to constant silting up. The supervising and keeping open of the Nadia rivers, therefore, forms one of the great tasks of fluvial engineering in Bengal. Proceeding south from Santipur, with a twist to the east, the Hugli river divides Nadia from Hugli district, until it touches the district of the Twenty-Four Parganas. It then proceeds almost due south to Calcutta, next twists to the south-west and finally turns south, entering the Bay of Bengal in 21° 41′ N., 88° E.
In the 40 miles of its course above Calcutta, the channels of the Hugli are under no supervision, and the result is that they have silted up and shifted to such an extent as to be no longer navigable for sea-going ships. Yet it was upon this upper section that all the famous ports of Bengal lay in olden times. From Calcutta to the sea (about 80 m.) the river is a record of engineering improvement and success. A minute supervision, with steady dredging and constant readjustment of buoys, now renders it a safe waterway to Calcutta for ships of the largest tonnage. Much attention has also been paid to the port of Calcutta (q.v.).
The tide runs rapidly on the Hugli, and produces a remarkable example of the fluvial phenomenon known as a “bore.” This consists of the head-wave of the advancing tide, hemmed in where the estuary narrows suddenly into the river, and often exceeds 7 ft. in height. It is felt as high up as Calcutta, and frequently destroys small boats. The difference from the lowest point of low-water in the dry season to the highest point of high-water in the rains is reported to be 20 ft. 10 in. The greatest mean rise of tide, about 16 ft., takes place in March, April or May—with a declining range during the rainy season to a mean of 10 ft., and a minimum during freshets of 3 ft. 6 in.
HUGLI, or Hooghly, a town and district of British India, in the Burdwan division of Bengal, taking their name from the river Hugli. The town, situated on the right bank of the Hugli, 24 m. above Calcutta by rail, forms one municipality with Chinsura, the old Dutch settlement, lower down the river. Pop. (1901) 29,383. It contains the Hooghly College at Chinsura, a Mahommedan college, two high schools and a hospital with a Lady Dufferin branch for female patients. The principal building is a handsome imambara, or mosque, constructed out of funds which had accumulated from an endowment originally left for the purpose by a wealthy Shia gentleman, Mahommed Mohsin. The town was founded by the Portuguese in 1537, on the decay of Satgaon, the royal port of Bengal. Upon establishing themselves, they built a fort at a place called Gholghat (close to the present jail), vestiges of which are still visible in the bed of the river. This fort gradually grew into the town and port of Hugli.
The District comprises an area of 1191 sq. m. In 1901 the population was 1,049,282, showing an increase of 1% in the decade. It is flat, with a gradual ascent to the north and north-west. The scenery along the high-lying bank of the Hugli has a quiet beauty of its own, presenting the appearance of a connected series of orchards and gardens, interspersed with factories, villages and temples. The principal rivers, besides the Hugli, are the Damodar and the Rupnarayan. As in other deltaic districts, the highest land lies nearest the rivers, and the lowest levels are found midway between two streams. There are in consequence considerable marshes both between the Hugli and the Damodar and between the latter river and the Rupnarayan. The district is traversed by the main line of the East Indian railway, with a branch to the pilgrim resort of Tarakeswar, whence a steam tramway has been constructed for a further distance of 31 m. The Eden canal furnishes irrigation, and there are several embankments and drainage works. Silk and indigo are both decaying industries, but the manufacture of brass and bell-metal ware is actively carried on at several places. There are several jute mills, a large flour mill, bone-crushing mills and a brick and tile works.
From an historical point of view the district possesses as much interest as any in Bengal. In the early period of Mahommedan rule Satgaon was the seat of the governors of Lower Bengal and a mint town. It was also a place of great commercial importance. In consequence of the silting up of the Saraswati, the river on which Satgaon was situated, the town became inaccessible to large ships, and the Portuguese settled at Hugli. In 1632 the latter place, having been taken from the Portuguese by the Mahommedans, was made the royal port of Bengal; and all the public offices and records were withdrawn from Satgaon, which rapidly fell into decay. In 1640 the East India Company established a factory at Hugli, their first settlement in Lower Bengal. In 1685, a dispute having taken place between the English factors and the nawab, the town was bombarded and burned to the ground. This was not the first time that Hugli had been the scene of a struggle deciding the fate of a European power in India. In 1629, when held by the Portuguese, it was besieged for three months and a half by a large Mahommedan force sent by the emperor Shah Jahan. The place was carried by storm; more than 1000 Portuguese were killed, upwards of 4000 prisoners taken, and of 300 vessels only 3 escaped. But Hugli district possesses historical interest for other European nations besides England and Portugal. The Dutch established themselves at Chinsura in the 17th century, and held the place till 1825, when it was ceded to Great Britain in exchange for the island of Sumatra. The Danes settled at Serampur in 1616, where they remained till 1845, when all Danish possessions in India were transferred to the East India Company. Chandernagore became a French settlement in 1688. The English captured this town twice, but since 1816 it has remained in the possession of the French.
See D. G. Crawford, A Brief History of the Hooghly District (Calcutta, 1903).
HUGO, GUSTAV VON (1764-1844), German jurist, was born at Lörrach in Baden, on the 23rd of November 1764. From the gymnasium at Carlsruhe he passed in 1782 to the university of Göttingen, where he studied law for three years. Having received the appointment of tutor to the prince of Anhalt-Dessau, he took his doctor’s degree at the university of Halle in 1788. Recalled in this year to Göttingen as extraordinary professor of law, he became ordinary professor in 1792. In the preface to his Beiträge zur zivilistischen Bücherkenntnis der letzten vierzig Jahre (1828-1829) he gives a sketch of the condition of the civil law teaching at Göttingen at that time. The Roman Canon and German elements of the existing law were, without criticism or differentiation, welded into an ostensible whole for practical needs, with the result that it was difficult to say whether historical truth or practical ends were most prejudiced. One man handed on the inert mass to the next in the same condition as he had received it, new errors crept in, and even the best of teachers could not escape from the false method which had become traditional. These were the evils which Hugo set himself to combat, and he became the founder of that historical school of jurisprudence which was continued and further developed by Savigny. His magna opera are the Lehrbuch eines zivilistischen Kursus (7 vols., 1792-1821), in which his method is thoroughly worked out, and the Zivilistisches Magazin (6 vols., 1790-1837). He died at Göttingen on the 15th of September 1844.
For an account of his life see Eyssenhardt, Zur Erinnerung an Gustav Hugo (Berlin, 1845).
HUGO, VICTOR MARIE (1802-1885), French poet, dramatist and romance-writer, youngest son of General J. L. S. Hugo (1773-1828), a distinguished soldier in Napoleon’s service, was born at Besançon on the 26th of February 1802. The all but still-born child was only kept alive and reared by the indefatigable devotion of his mother Sophie Trébuchet (d. 1821), a royalist of La Vendée. Educated first in Spain and afterwards in France, the boy whose infancy had followed the fortunes of the imperial camp grew up a royalist and a Catholic. His first work in poetry and in fiction was devoted to the passionate proclamation of his faith in these principles.
The precocious eloquence and ardour of these early works made him famous before his time. The odes which he published at the age of twenty, admirable for their spontaneous fervour and fluency, might have been merely the work of a marvellous boy; the ballads which followed them two years later revealed him as a great poet, a natural master of lyric and creative song. In 1823, at the age of twenty-one, he married his cousin Adèle Foucher (d. 1868). In the same year his first romance, Han d’Islande, was given to the press; his second, Bug-Jargal, appeared three years later. In 1827 he published the great dramatic poem of Cromwell, a masterpiece at all points except that of fitness for the modern stage. Two years afterwards he published Les Orientales, a volume of poems so various in style, so noble in spirit, so perfect in workmanship, in music and in form, that they might alone suffice for the foundation of an immortal fame. In the course of nine years, from 1831 to 1840, he published Les Feuilles d’automne, Les Chants du crépuscule, Les Voix intérieures and Les Rayons et les ombres.
That their author was one of the greatest elegiac and lyric poets ever born into the world, any one of these volumes would amply suffice to prove. That he was the greatest tragic and dramatic poet born since the age of Shakespeare, the appearance of Hernani in 1830 made evident for ever to all but the meanest and most perverse of dunces and malignants. The earlier and even greater tragedy of Marion de Lorme (1828) had been proscribed on the ground that it was impossible for royalty to tolerate the appearance of a play in which a king was represented as the puppet of a minister. In all the noble and glorious life of the greatest poet of his time there is nothing on record more chivalrous and characteristic than the fact that Victor Hugo refused to allow the play which had been prohibited by the government of Charles X. to be instantly produced under the government of his supersessor. Le Roi s’amuse (1832), the next play which Hugo gave to the stage, was prohibited by order of Louis Philippe after a tumultuous first night—to reappear fifty years later on the very same day of the same month, under the eyes of its author, with atoning acclamation from a wider audience than the first. Terror and pity had never found on the stage word or expression which so exactly realized the ideal aim of tragic poetry among the countrymen of Aeschylus and Sophocles since the time or since the passing of Shakespeare, of Marlowe and of Webster. The tragedy of Lucrèce Borgia, coequal in beauty and power with its three precursors, followed next year in the humbler garb of prose; but the prose of Victor Hugo stands higher on the record of poetry than the verse of any lesser dramatist or poet. Marie Tudor (1833), his next play, was hardly more daring in its Shakespearean defiance of historic fact, and hardly more triumphant in its Shakespearean loyalty to the everlasting truth of human character and passion. Angelo, Tyran de Padoue (1835), the last of the tragic triad to which their creator denied the transfiguration of tragic verse, is inferior to neither in power of imagination and of style, in skill of invention and construction, and in mastery over all natural and noble sources of pity and of terror. La Esmeralda, the libretto of an opera founded on his great tragic romance of Notre-Dame de Paris, is a miracle of lyric melody and of skilful adaptation. Ruy Blas (1838) was written in verse, and in such verse as none but he could write. In command and in expression of passion and of pathos, of noble and of evil nature, it equals any other work of this great dramatic poet; in the lifelike fusion of high comedy with deep tragedy it excels them all. Les Burgraves, a tragic poem of transcendent beauty in execution and imaginative audacity in conception, found so little favour on the stage that the author refused to submit his subsequent plays to the verdict of a public audience.
Victor Hugo’s first mature work in prose fiction, Le Dernier Jour d’un condamné, has appeared thirteen years earlier (1829). As a tragic monodrama it is incomparable for sustained power and terrible beauty. The story of Claude Gueux, published five years later (1834), another fervent protest against the infliction of capital punishment, was followed by many other eloquent and passionate appeals to the same effect, written or spoken on various occasions which excited the pity or the indignation of the orator or the poet. In 1831 appeared the greatest of all tragic or historic or romantic poems in the form of prose narrative, Notre-Dame de Paris. Three years afterwards the author published, under the title of Littérature et philosophie mêlées, a compilation or selection of notes and essays ranging and varying in date and in style from his earliest effusions of religious royalism to the magnificent essay on Mirabeau which represents at once the historical opinion and the critical capacity of Victor Hugo at the age of thirty-two. Next year he published Le Rhin, a series of letters from Germany, brilliant and vivid beyond all comparison, containing one of the most splendid stories for children ever written, and followed by a political supplement rather pathetically unprophetic in its predictions.
At the age of thirty-eight he honoured the French Academy by taking his place among its members; the speech delivered on the occasion was characteristically generous in its tribute to an undeserving memory, and significantly enthusiastic in its glorification of Napoleon. Idolatry of his father’s hero and leader had now superseded the earlier superstition inculcated by his mother. In 1846 his first speech in the chamber of peers—Louis Philippe’s House of Lords—was delivered on behalf of Poland; his second, on the subject of coast defence, is memorable for the evidence it bears of careful research and practical suggestion. His pleading on behalf of the exiled family of Bonaparte induced Louis Philippe to cancel the sentence which excluded its members from France. After the fall and flight of the house of Orleans, his parliamentary eloquence was never less generous in aim and always as fervent in its constancy to patriotic and progressive principle. When the conspiring forces of clerical venality and political prostitution had placed a putative Bonaparte in power attained by perjury after perjury, and supported by massacre after massacre, Victor Hugo, in common with all honourable men who had ever taken part in political or public life under the government superseded by force of treason and murder, was driven from his country into an exile of well-nigh twenty years. Next year he published Napoléon le petit; twenty-five years afterwards, Histoire d’un crime. In these two books his experience and his opinion of the tactics which founded the second French empire stand registered for all time. In the deathless volume of Châtiments, which appeared in 1853, his indignation, his genius, and his faith found such utterance and such expression as must recall to the student alternately the lyric inspiration of Coleridge and Shelley, the prophetic inspiration of Dante and Isaiah, the satiric inspiration of Juvenal and Dryden. Three years after Les Châtiments, a book written in lightning, appeared Les Contemplations, a book written in sunlight and starlight. Of the six parts into which it is divided, the first translates into many-sided music the joys and sorrows, the thoughts and fancies, the studies and ardours and speculations of youth; the second, as full of light and colour, grows gradually deeper in tone of thought and music; the third is yet riper and more various in form of melody and in fervour of meditation; the fourth is the noblest of all tributes ever paid by song to sorrow—a series of poems consecrated to the memory of the poet’s eldest daughter, who was drowned, together with her husband, by the upsetting of a boat off the coast of Normandy, a few months after their wedding-day, in 1843; the fifth and the sixth books, written during his first four years of exile (all but one noble poem which bears date nine years earlier than its epilogue or postscript), contain more than a few poems unsurpassed and unsurpassable for depth and clarity and trenchancy of thought, for sublimity of inspiration, for intensity of faith, for loyalty in translation from nature, and for tenderness in devotion to truth; crowned and glorified and completed by their matchless dedication to the dead. Three years later again, in 1859, Victor Hugo gave to the world the first instalment of the greatest book published in the 19th century, La Légende des siècles. Opening with a vision of Eve in Paradise which eclipses Milton’s in beauty no less than in sublimity—a dream of the mother of mankind at the hour when she knew the first sense of dawning motherhood, it closes with a vision of the trumpet to be sounded on the day of judgment which transcends the imagination of Dante by right of a realized idea which was utterly impossible of conception to a believer in Dante’s creed: the idea of real and final equity; the concept of absolute and abstract righteousness. Between this opening and this close the pageant of history and of legend, marshalled and vivified by the will and the hand of the poet, ranges through an infinite variety of action and passion, of light and darkness, of terror and pity, of lyric rapture and of tragic triumph.
After yet another three years’ space the author of La Légende des siècles reappeared as the author of Les Misérables, the greatest epic and dramatic work of fiction ever created or conceived: the epic of a soul transfigured and redeemed, purified by heroism and glorified through suffering; the tragedy and the comedy of life at its darkest and its brightest, of humanity at its best and at its worst. Two years afterwards the greatest man born since the death of Shakespeare paid homage to the greatest of his predecessors in a volume of magnificent and discursive eloquence which bore the title of William Shakespeare, and might, as its author admitted and suggested, more properly have been entitled À propos de Shakespeare. It was undertaken with the simple design of furnishing a preface to his younger son’s translation of Shakespeare; a monument of perfect scholarship, of indefatigable devotion, and of literary genius, which eclipses even Urquhart’s Rabelais—its only possible competitor; and to which the translator’s father prefixed a brief and admirable note of introduction in the year after the publication of the volume which had grown under his hand into the bulk and the magnificence of an epic poem in prose. In the same year Les Chansons des rues el des bois gave evidence of new power and fresh variety in the exercise and display of an unequalled skill and a subtle simplicity of metre and of style employed on the everlasting theme of lyric and idyllic fancy, and touched now and then with a fire more sublime than that of youth and love. Next year the exile of Guernsey published his third great romance, Les Travailleurs de la mer, a work unsurpassed even among the works of its author for splendour of imagination and of style, for pathos and sublimity of truth. Three years afterwards the same theme was rehandled with no less magnificent mastery in L’Homme qui rit; the theme of human heroism confronted with the superhuman tyranny of blind and unimaginable chance, overpowered and unbroken, defeated and invincible. Between the dates of these two great books appeared La Voix de Guernesey, a noble and terrible poem on the massacre of Mentana which branded and commemorated for ever the papal and imperial infamy of the colleagues in that crime. In 1872 Victor Hugo published in imperishable verse his record of the year which followed the collapse of the empire, L’Année terrible. All the poet and all the man spoke out and stood evident in the perfervid patriotism, the filial devotion, the fatherly tenderness, the indignation and the pity, which here find alternate expression in passionate and familiar and majestic song. In 1874 he published his last great romance, the tragic and historic poem in prose called Quatrevingt-treize; a work as rich in thought, in tenderness, in wisdom and in humour and in pathos, as ever was cast into the mould of poetry or of fiction.
The introduction to his first volume of Actes et paroles, ranging in date from 1841 to 1851, is dated in June 1875; it is one of his most earnest and most eloquent appeals to the conscience and intelligence of the student. The second volume contains the record of his deeds and words during the years of his exile; like the first and the third, it is headed by a memorable preface, as well worth the reverent study of those who may dissent from some of the writer’s views as of those who may assent to all. The third and fourth volumes preserve the register of his deeds and words from 1870 to 1885; they contain, among other things memorable, the nobly reticent and pathetic tribute to the memory of the two sons, Charles (1826-1871) and François (1828-1873), he had lost since their common return from exile. In 1877 appeared the second series of La Légende des siècles; and in the same year the author of that colossal work, treating no less of superhuman than of human things, gave us the loveliest and most various book of song on the loveliest and simplest of subjects ever given to man, L’Art d’être grandpère. Next year he published Le Pape, a vision of the spirit of Christ in appeal against the spirit of Christianity, his ideal follower confronted and contrasted with his nominal vicar; next year again La Pitié suprême, a plea for charity towards tyrants who know not what they do, perverted by omnipotence and degraded by adoration; two years later Religions et religion, a poem which is at once a cry of faith and a protest against the creeds which deform and distort and leave it misshapen and envenomed and defiled; and in the same year L’Ane, a paean of satiric invective against the past follies of learned ignorance, and lyric rapture of confidence in the future wisdom and the final conscience of the world. These four great poems, one in sublimity of spirit and in supremacy of style, were succeeded next year by a fourfold gift of even greater price, Les Quatre Vents de l’esprit: the first book, that of satire, is as full of fiery truth and radiant reason as any of his previous work in that passionate and awful kind; the second or dramatic book is as full of fresh life and living nature, of tragic humour and of mortal pathos, as any other work of the one great modern dramatist’s; the third or lyric book would suffice to reveal its author as incomparably and immeasurably the greatest poet of his age, and one great among the greatest of all time; the fourth or epic book is the sublimest and most terrible of historic poems—a visionary pageant of French history from the reign and the revelries of Henry IV. to the reign and the execution of Louis XVI. Next year the great tragic poem of Torquemada came forth to bear witness that the hand which wrote Ruy Blas had lost nothing of its godlike power and its matchless cunning, if the author of Le Roi s’amuse had ceased to care much about coherence of construction from the theatrical point of view as compared with the perfection of a tragedy designed for the devotion of students not unworthy or incapable of the study; that his command of pity and terror, his powers of intuition and invention, had never been more absolute and more sublime; and that his infinite and illimitable charity of imagination could transfigure even the most monstrous historic representative of Christian or Catholic diabolatry into the likeness of a terribly benevolent and a tragically magnificent monomaniac. Two years later Victor Hugo published the third and concluding series of La Légende des siècles.
On the 22nd of May 1885 Victor Hugo died. He was given a magnificent public funeral, and his remains were laid in the Pantheon. The first volume published of his posthumous works was the exquisite and splendid Théâtre en liberté, a sequence if not a symphony of seven poems in dramatic form, tragic or comic or fanciful eclogues, incomparable with the work of any other man but the author of The Tempest and The Winter’s Tale in combination and alternation of gayer and of graver harmonies. The unfinished poems, Dieu and La Fin de Satan, are full to overflowing of such magnificent work, such wise simplicity of noble thought, such heroic and pathetic imagination, such reverent and daring faith, as no other poet has ever cast into deathless words and set to deathless music. Les Jumeaux, an unfinished tragedy, would possibly have been the very greatest of his works if it had been completed on the same scale and on the same lines as it was begun and carried forward to the point at which it was cut short for ever. His reminiscences of “Things Seen” in the course of a strangely varied experience, and his notes of travel among the Alps and Pyrenees, in the north of France and in Belgium, in the south of France and in Burgundy, are all recorded by such a pen and registered by such a memory as no other man ever had at the service of his impressions or his thoughts. Toute la lyre, his latest legacy to the world, would be enough, though no other evidence were left, to show that the author was one of the very greatest among poets and among men; unsurpassed in sublimity of spirit, in spontaneity of utterance, in variety of power, and in perfection of workmanship; infinite and profound beyond all reach of praise at once in thought and in sympathy, in perception and in passion; master of all the simplest as of all the subtlest melodies or symphonies of song that ever found expression in a Border ballad or a Pythian ode.
(A. C. S.)
Bibliography.—Victor Hugo’s complete works were published in a definitive edition at Paris in 58 volumes (1885-1902). The critical literature which has grown up round his name is very extensive, from the time of Sainte-Beuve onwards, and only a few of the more important books need here be mentioned for reference on biographical and other details: F. T. Marzials, Life of Hugo, with bibliography (1888); A. C. Swinburne, Study of Hugo (1886); E. Dupuy, Victor Hugo, l’homme et le poète (1886); Paul de Saint Victor, Victor Hugo (1885); F. Brunetière, Victor Hugo (1903); Jules Claretie, Victor Hugo, souvenirs intimes (1902). See also The Bookman for August 1904; Francis Gribble, “The Hugo Legend,” an adverse view, in Fortnightly Review (February 1910); and the article French Literature.
HUGUENOTS, the name given from about the middle of the 16th century to the Protestants of France. It was formerly explained as coming from the German Eidgenossen, the designation of the people of Geneva at the time when they were admitted to the Swiss confederation. This explanation is now abandoned. The words Huguenot, Huguenote are old French words, common in 14th and 15th-century charters. As the Protestants called the Catholics papistes, so the Catholics called the Protestants huguenots. Henri Estienne, one of the great savants of his time, in the introduction to his Apologie d’Herodote (1566) gives a very clear explanation of the term huguenots. The Protestants at Tours, he says, used to assemble by night near the gate of King Hugo, whom the people regarded as a spirit. A monk, therefore, in a sermon declared that the Lutherans ought to be called Huguenots as kinsmen of King Hugo, inasmuch as they would only go out at night as he did. This nickname became popular from 1560 onwards, and for a long time the French Protestants were always known by it.
France could not stand outside the religious movement of the 16th century. It is true that the French reform movement has often been regarded as an offshoot of Lutheranism; up to I he middle of the century its adherents were known as Lutherans. But it should not be forgotten that so early as 1512 Jacobus Faber (q.v.) of Étaples published his Santi Pauli Epistolae xiv. ... cum commentariis, which enunciates the cardinal doctrine of reform, justification by faith, and that in 1523 appeared his French translation of the New Testament. The first Protestants were those who set the teachings of the Gospel against the doctrines of the Roman Church. As early as 1525 Jacques Pavannes, the hermit of Livry, and shortly afterwards Louis de Berquin, the first martyrs, were burned at the stake. But no persecution could stop the Reform movement, and on the walls of Paris and even at Amboise, on the very door of Francis I.’s bedroom, there were found placards condemning the mass (1534). On the 29th of January 1535 an edict was published ordering the extermination of the heretics. From this edict dates the emigration of French Protestants, an emigration which did not cease till the middle of the 18th century. Three years later (1538) at Strassburg the first French Protestant Church, composed of 1500 refugees, was founded.
Of all these exiles the most famous was John Calvin (q.v.), the future leader of the movement, who fled to Basel, where he is said to have written the famous Institutio christianae religionis, preceded by a letter to Francis I. in which he pleaded the cause of the reformers. The first Protestant community in France was that of Meaux (1546) organized on the lines of the church at Strassburg of which Calvin was pastor. The Catholic Florimond de Remond paid it the beautiful tribute of saying that it seemed as though “la chrétienté fut revenue en elle à sa primitive innocence.”
Persecution, however, became more rigorous. The Vaudois of Cabrières and Mérindol had in 1545 been massacred by the orders of Jean de Maynier, baron d’Oppède, lieutenant-general of Provence, and at Paris was created a special court in the parlement, for the suppression of heretics, a court which became famous in history as the Chambre ardente (1549). In spite of persecution the churches became more numerous; the church at Paris was founded in 1556. They realized the necessity of uniting in defence of their rights and their liberty, and in 1558 at Poitiers it was decided that all the Protestant churches in France should formulate by common accord a confession of faith and an ecclesiastical discipline. The church at Paris was commissioned to summon the first synod, which in spite of the danger of persecution met on the 25th of May 1559. The Synod of Paris derived its inspiration from the constitution introduced by Calvin at Geneva, which has since become the model for all the presbyterian churches. Ecclesiastical authority resides ultimately in the people, for the faithful select the elders who are charged with the general supervision of the church and the choice of pastors. The churches are independent units, and there can be no question of superiority among them; at the same time they have common interests and their unity must be maintained by an authority which is capable of protecting them. The association of several neighbouring churches forms a local council (colloque). Over these stands the provincial synod, on which each church is equally represented by lay delegates and pastors. Supreme authority resides in the National Synod composed of representatives, lay and ecclesiastic, elected by the provincial synods. The democratic character of this constitution of elders and synods is particularly remarkable in view of the early date at which it began to flourish. The striking individuality of the Huguenot character cannot be fully realized without a clear understanding of this powerful organization which contrived to reconcile individual liberty with a central authority.
The synod of 1559 was the beginning of a remarkable increase in the Reform movement; at that synod fifteen churches were represented, two years later, in 1561, the number increased to 2150. The parlements were powerless before this increase; thousands left the Catholic Church, and when it was seen that execution and popular massacre provided no solution of the difficulty the struggle was carried into the arena of national politics. On the side of the reformers were ranged some among the noblest Frenchmen of the age, Coligny, La Noue, Duplessis Mornay, Jean Cousin, Ramus, Marot, Ambroise Paré, Olivier de Serres, Bernard Palissy, the Estiennes, Hotman, Jean de Serres, with the princess Renée of France, Jeanne d’Albret, Louise de Coligny. The policy which refused liberty of conscience to the reformers and thus plunged the country into the horrors of civil war came near to causing a national catastrophe. For more than fifty years the history of the Huguenots is that of France (1560-1629). Francis II., who succeeded Henry II. at the age of sixteen, married Mary Stuart, and fell under the domination of the queen’s uncles, the Guises, who were to lead the anti-Reform party. The Bourbons, the Montmorencies, the Chatillons, out of hostility to them, became the chiefs of the Huguenots.
The conspiracy of Amboise, formed with the object of kidnapping the king (March 1560), was discovered, and resulted in the death of the plotters; it was followed by the proclamation of the Edict of Romorantin which laid an interdict upon the Protestant religion. But the reformers had become so powerful that Coligny, who was to become their most famous leader, protested in their name against this violation of liberty of conscience. The Guise party caused the prince of Condé to be arrested and condemned to death, but the sentence was not carried into effect, and at this moment Catherine de’ Medici became regent on the accession of Charles IX. She introduced Italian methods of government, alternating between concessions and vigorous persecution, both alike devoid of sincerity. For a moment, at the colloquy of Poissy (Oct. 1561), at which Roman Catholic and Protestant divines were assembled together and Theodore Beza played so important a part, it seemed as though a modus vivendi would be established. The attempt failed, but by the edict of January 1562, religious liberty was assured to the Huguenots. This, however, was merely the prelude to civil war, the signal for which was given by the Guises, who slaughtered a number of Huguenots assembled for worship in a barn at Vassy (March 1, 1562). The duke of Guise, entering Paris in triumph, transferred the court to Fontainebleau by a daring coup d’état in defiance of the queen regent. It was then that Condé declared “qu’on ne pouvait plus rien espérer que de Dieu et ses armes,” and with the Huguenot leaders signed at Orleans (April 11, 1562) the manifesto in which, having declared their loyalty to the crown, they stated that as good and loyal subjects they were driven to take up arms for liberty of conscience on behalf of the persecuted saints. The first civil war had already broken out; till the end of the century the history of France is that of the struggle between the Huguenots upholding “The Cause” (La Cause) and the Roman Catholics fighting for the Holy League (La Sainte Ligue). The leading events only will be related here (see also France: History). The Huguenots lost the battle of Dreux (Dec. 19, 1562), the duke of Guise was assassinated by Poltrot de Méré (Feb. 18, 1563) and finally Condé signed the Edict of Amboise which put an end to this first war. But the League gradually extended its action and Catherine de’ Medici entered into negotiations with Spain. The Huguenots, seeing their danger, renewed hostilities, but after their defeat at St Denis (Nov. 10, 1567) and the revolt of La Rochelle, peace was concluded at Longjumeau (March 23, 1568). This truce lasted only a few months. Pope Pius V. did not cease to demand the extermination of the heretics, and the queen mother finally issued the edict of the 28th of September 1568, which put the Huguenots outside the protection of the law. The Huguenots once more took up arms, but were defeated at Jarnac (March 13, 1569), and Condé was taken prisoner and assassinated by Montesquiou. But Jeanne d’Albret renewed the courage of the vanquished by presenting to them her son Henri de Bourbon, the future Henry IV. Coligny, whose heroic courage rose with adversity, collected the remnants of the Protestant army and by a march as able as it was audacious moved on Paris, and the Peace of St Germain was signed on the 8th of August 1570.
For a moment it seemed reasonable to hope that the war was at an end. Coligny had said that he would prefer to be dragged through the streets of Paris than to recommence the fighting; Charles IX. had realized the nobility and the patriotism of the man who wished to drive the Spaniards from Flanders; Henri de Bourbon was to marry Marguerite of France. Peace seemed to be assured when on the night of the 24th of August, 1572, after a council at which Catherine de’ Medici, Charles IX., the duke of Anjou and other leaders of the League assisted, there occurred the treacherous Massacre of St Bartholomew (q.v.) in which Coligny and all the leading Huguenots were slain. This date marks a disastrous epoch in the history of France, the long period of triumph of the Catholic reaction, during which the Huguenots had to fight for their very existence. The Paris massacre was repeated throughout France; few were those who were noble enough to decline to become the executioners of their friends, and the Protestants were slain in thousands. The survivors resolved upon a desperate resistance. It was at this time that the Huguenots were driven to form a political party; otherwise they must, like the Protestants of Spain, have been exterminated. This party was formed at Milhau in 1573, definitely constituted at La Rochelle in 1588, and lasted until the peace of Alais in 1629. The delegates selected by the churches bound themselves to offer a united opposition to the violence of the enemies of God, the king and the state. It is a profound mistake to attribute to them, as their enemies have done, the intention of overthrowing the monarchy and substituting a republic. They were royalists to the core, as is shown by the sacrifices they made for the sake of setting Henry IV. on the throne. It is true, however, that among themselves they formed a kind of republic which, according to the historian J. A. de Thou, had its own laws dealing with civil government, justice, war, commerce, finance. They had a president called the Protector of the Churches, an office held first by Condé and afterwards by the king of Navarre up to the day on which he became king of France as Henry IV. (1589). The fourth religious war, which had broken out immediately after the Massacre of St Bartholomew, was brought to an end by the pacification of Boulogne (July 16, 1573), which granted a general amnesty, but the obstinate intolerance of the League resulted in the creation of a Catholic party called “les Politiques” which refused to submit to their domination and offered aid to the Huguenots against the Guises. The recollections of the horrors of St Bartholomew’s night had hastened the death of Charles IX., the last of the Valois; he had been succeeded by the most debauched and effeminate of monarchs, Henry III. Once more war broke out. Henry of Guise, “le Balafré,” nephew of the cardinal of Lorraine, became chief of the League, while the duke of Anjou, the king’s brother, made common cause with the Huguenots. The peace of Monsieur, signed on the 5th of May 1576, marked a new victory of liberty of conscience, but its effect was ephemeral; hostilities soon recommenced and lasted for many years, and only became fiercer when the duke of Anjou died on the 10th of June 1584.
The fact that on the death of Henry III. the crown would pass to Henry of Navarre, the Protector of the Churches, induced the Guise party to declare that they would never accept a heretical monarch, and, at the instigation of Henry of Guise, Cardinal de Bourbon was nominated by them to succeed. Henry of Navarre since 1575 leader of the Huguenots, had year by year seen his influence increase, and now, faced by the machinations of the Guises, who had made overtures to Spain, declared that his only object was to free the feeble Henry III. from their influence. On the 20th of October 1587 he won the battle of Coutras, but on the 28th the foreign Protestants who were coming to his aid were routed by Guise at Montargis. The new body, known as “the Sixteen of Paris,” thereupon compelled Henry III. to sign the “Edict of Union” by which the cardinal of Bourbon was declared heir presumptive. The king could not, however, endure the humiliation of hearing Henry of Guise described as “king of Paris” and on the 23rd of December 1588 had him murdered together with the cardinal of Lorraine at the château of Blois. The League, now led by the duke of Mayenne, Guise’s brother, declared war to the knife upon him and caused him to be excommunicated. In his isolation Henry III. threw himself into the arms of Henry of Navarre, who saved the royalist party by defeating Mayenne and escorted the king with his victorious army to St. Cloud, whence he proposed to enter Paris and destroy the League. But Henry III., on the 1st of August 1589, was assassinated by the monk Jacques Clement, on his deathbed appointing Henry of Navarre as his successor.
This only spurred the League to redoubled energy, and Mayenne proclaimed the cardinal of Bourbon king with the title of Charles X. But Henry IV., who had already promised to maintain the Roman Church, gained new adherents every day, defeated the Leaguers at Arques in 1589, utterly routed Mayenne at Ivry on the 14th of March 1590, and laid siege to Paris. Cardinal de Bourbon having died in the same year and France being in a state of anarchy, Philip II. of Spain, in concert with Pope Gregory XIV., who excommunicated Henry IV., supported the claims of the infanta Isabella. Mayenne, unable to continue the struggle without Spanish help, promised to assist him, but Henry neutralized this danger by declaring himself a Roman Catholic at St Denis (July 25, 1593), saying, “Paris after all is worth a mass, in spite of the advice and the prayers of my faithful Huguenots.” “It is with anguish and grief,” writes Beza, “that I think of the fall of this prince in whom so many hopes were placed.” On the 22nd of March 1594 Henry entered Paris. The League was utterly defeated. Thus the Huguenots after forty years of strife obtained by their constancy the promulgation of the Edict of Nantes (April 13, 1598), the charter of religion and political freedom (see Nantes, Edict of).
The Protestants might reasonably hope that Henry IV., in spite of his abjuration of their faith, would remember the devoted support which they had given him, and that his authority would guarantee the observance of the provisions of the Edict. Unhappily twelve years afterwards, on the 14th of May 1610, Henry was assassinated by Ravaillac, leaving the great work incomplete. Once more France was to undergo the misery of civil war. During the minority of Louis XIII. power resided in the hands of counsellors who had not inherited the wisdom of Henry IV. and were only too ready to favour the Catholic party. The Huguenots, realizing that their existence was at stake, once more took up arms in defence of their liberty under the leadership of Henri de Rohan (q.v.). Their watchword had always been that, so long as the state was opposed to liberty of conscience, so long there could be no end to religious and civil strife, that misfortune and disaster must attend an empire of which the sovereign identified himself with a single section of his people. Richelieu had entered the king’s council on the 4th of May 1624; the destruction of the Huguenots was his policy and he pursued it to a triumphant conclusion. On the 28th of October 1628, La Rochelle, the last stronghold of the Huguenots, was obliged to surrender after a siege rendered famous for all time by the heroism of its defenders and of its mayor. The peace of Alais, which was signed on the 28th of June 1629, marks the end of the civil wars.
The Huguenots had ceased to exist as a political party and, in the assurance that liberty of conscience would be accorded to them, showed themselves loyal subjects. On the death of Louis XIII., the declaration of the 8th of July 1643 had guaranteed to the Protestants “free and unrestricted, exercise of their religion,” thus confirming the Edict of Nantes. The synods of Charenton (1644) and Loudun (1659) asserted their absolute loyalty to Louis XIV., a loyalty of which the Huguenots had given proof not only by their entire abstention from the troubles of the Fronde, but also by their public adherence to the king. The Roman Catholic clergy had never accepted the Edict of Nantes, and all their efforts were directed to obtaining its revocation. As long as Mazarin was alive the complaints of the clergy were in vain, but when Louis XIV. attained his majority there commenced a legal persecution which was bound in time to bring about the ruin of the reformed churches. The Edict of Nantes, which was part of the law of the land, might seem to defy all attacks, but the clergy found means to evade the law by demanding that it should be observed with literal accuracy, disregarding the changes which had been produced in France during more than half a century. The clergy in 1661 successfully demanded that commissioners should be sent to the provinces to report infractions of the Edict, and thus began a judicial war which was to last for more than twenty years. All the churches which had been built since the Edict of Nantes were condemned to be demolished. All the privileges which were not explicitly stated in the actual text of the Edict were suppressed. More than four hundred proclamations, edicts or declarations attacking the Huguenots in their households and their civil freedom, their property and their liberty of conscience were promulgated during the years which preceded the revocation of the Edict of Nantes. In spite of all sufferings which this rigorous legislation inflicted upon them they did not cease to resist, and in order to crush this resistance and to compel them to accept the “king’s religion,” there were organized the terrible dragonnades (1683-1686) which effected the forcible conversion of thousands of Protestants who gave way under the tortures which were inflicted upon them. It was then that Louis XIV. declared that “the best of the larger part of our subjects, who formerly held the so-called reformed religion, have embraced the Catholic religion, and therefore the Edict of Nantes has become unnecessary”; on the 18th of October 1685 he pronounced its revocation. Thus under the influence of the clergy was committed one of the most flagrant political and religious blunders in the history of France, which in the course of a few years lost more than 400,000 of its inhabitants, men who, having to choose between their conscience and their country, endowed the nations which received them with their heroism, their courage and their ability.
There is perhaps no example in history of so cruel a persecution as this, which destroyed a church of which Protestant Europe was justly proud. At no period in its career had it numbered among its adherents so many men of eminence, Abbadie, Claude, Bayle, Du Bosc, Jurieu, Élie Benoist, La Placette, Basnage, Daillé, Mestrezat, Du Quesne, Schomberg, Ruvigny. There were no Huguenots left in France; those who, conquered by persecution, remained there were described as “New Catholics.” All the pastors who refused to abjure their faith were compelled to leave the country within fifteen days. The work was complete. Protestantism, with its churches and its schools, was destroyed. As Bayle wrote, “France was Catholic to a man under the reign of Louis the Great.”
Persecution had succeeded in silencing, but it could not convert the people. The Huguenots, before the ruins of their churches, remembered the early Christians and held their services in secret. Their pastors, making light of death, returned from the lands of their exile and visited their own churches to restore their courage. If any one denied the Catholic faith on his death-bed his body was thrown into the common sewers. The galleys were full of brave Huguenots condemned for remaining constant to the Protestant faith. For fifteen years the exiles continuously besought Louis XIV. to give them back their religious liberty. For a moment they hoped that the Treaty of Ryswick (1697) would realise their hopes, but Louis XIV. steadily declined to grant their requests. Despair armed the Cévennes, and in 1702 the war of the Camisards broke out, a struggle of giants sustained by Jean Cavalier with his mountaineers against the royal troops (see Camisards and Cavalier, Jean). The Huguenots seemed to be finally conquered. On the 8th of March 1715 Louis XIV. announced that he had put an end to all exercise of the Protestant religion; but in this very year, on the 21st of August, while the king was dying at Versailles, there assembled together at Monoblet in Languedoc, under the presidency of a young man twenty years of age, Antoine Court, a number of preachers, as the pastors were then called, with the object of raising the church from its ruins. This was the first synod of the Desert. To re-establish the abandoned worship, to unite the churches in the struggle for liberty of conscience, such was the work to which Court devoted his life, and which earned for him the name of the “Restorer of Protestantism” (see Court, Antoine). In spite of persecution the Protestants continued their assemblies; the fear of death and of the galleys were alike powerless to break their resistance. On the demand of the clergy all marriages celebrated by their pastors were declared null and void, and the children born of these unions were regarded as bastards.
Protestantism, which persecution seemed to have driven from France, drew new life from this very persecution. Outlawed, exiles in their own country, deprived of all civil existence, the Huguenots showed an invincible heroism. The history of their church during the period of the Desert is the history of a church which refused to die. Amongst its famous defenders was Paul Rabaut, the successor of Antoine Court. Year by year the churches became more numerous. In 1756 there were already 40 pastors; several years later, in 1763, the date of the last synod of the Desert, their number had increased to 65. The question of Protestant marriages roused public opinion which could not tolerate the idea that Frenchmen, whose sole crime was their religious belief, should be condemned to civil death. The torture of Jean Calas, who was condemned on a false charge of having killed his son because he desired to become a Catholic, caused general indignation, of which Voltaire became the eloquent mouthpiece. Ideas of tolerance, of which Bayle had been the earliest advocate, became victorious, and owing to the devotion of Rabaut Saint-Étienne, son of Paul Rabaut, and the zeal of Lafayette, the edict of November 1787, in spite of the fierce opposition of the clergy, renewed the civil rights of the Huguenots by recognizing the validity of their marriages. Victories even greater were in store; two years later liberty of conscience was won. On the 22nd of August 1789 the pastor Rabaut Saint-Étienne, deputy for the sénéchaussée of Nîmes to the States General, cried out, “It is not tolerance which I demand, it is liberty, that my country should accord it equally without distinction of rank, of birth or of religion.” The Declaration of the Rights of Man affirmed the liberty of religion; the Huguenots had not suffered in vain, for the cause for which their ancestors and themselves had suffered so much was triumphant, and it was the nation itself which proclaimed the victory. But religious passions were always active, and at Montauban as at Nîmes (1790) Catholics and Protestants came to blows. The Huguenots, having endured the persecutions of successive monarchs, had to endure those of the Terror; their churches were shut, their pastors dispersed and some died upon the scaffold. On the 3rd of Ventose, year II. (February 21, 1795), the church was divorced from the state and the Protestants devoted themselves to reorganization. Some years later Bonaparte, having signed the Concordat of the 15th of July 1801, promulgated the law of the 18th of Germinal, year X., which recognized the legal standing of the Protestant church, but took from it the character of free church which it had always claimed. So great was the contrast between a past which recalled to Protestants nothing but persecution, and a present in which they enjoyed liberty of conscience, that they accepted with a profound gratitude a régime of which the ecclesiastical standpoint was so alien to their traditions. With enthusiasm they repeated the words with which Napoleon had received the pastors at the Tuileries on the 16th of Frimaire, year XII.: “The empire of the law ends where the undefined empire of conscience begins; law and prince are powerless against this liberty.”
The Protestants, on the day on which liberty of conscience was restored, could measure the full extent of the misery which they had endured. Of this people, which in the 16th century formed more than one-tenth of the population of France, there survived only a few hundred thousands; migration and persecution had more than decimated them. In 1626 there were 809 pastors in the service of 751 churches; in 1802 there were only 121 pastors and 171 churches; in Paris there was only a single church with a single pastor. The church had no faculty of theology, no schools, no Bible societies, no asylums, no orphanages, no religious literature. Everything had to be created afresh, and this work was pursued during the 19th century with the energy and the earnest faith which is characteristic of the Huguenot character.
At the fall of the Empire (1815) the reaction of the White Terror once more exposed the Protestants to outrage, and once more a number fled from persecution and sought safety in foreign countries. Peace having been established, attention was once more focussed on religious questions, and the period was marked in Protestantism by a remarkable awakening. On all sides churches were built and schools opened. It was an epoch of the greatest importance, for the church concentrated itself more and more on its real mission. During this period were founded the great religious societies:—Société biblique (1819), Société de l’instruction primaire (1829), Société des traités (1821), Société des missions (1822). The influence of English thought on the development of religious life was remarkable, and theology drew its inspiration from the writings of Paley, David Bogue, Chalmers, Ebenezer Erskine, Robert and James Alexander Haldane, which were translated into French. Later on German theology and the works of Kant, Neander and Schleiermacher produced a far-reaching effect. This was due to the period of persecution which had checked that development of religious thought which had been so remarkable a feature of French Protestantism of the 16th and 17th centuries.
Slowly Protestantism once more took its place in the national life. The greatest names in its history are those of Guizot and Cuvier; Adolf Monod, with Athanase Coquerel, stand in the front rank of pulpit orators. The Protestants associated themselves with all the great philanthropic works—Baron Jules Delessert founded savings banks, Baron de Staël condemned slavery, and all France united to honour the pastor, Jean Frédéric Oberlin. But the reformers, if they had no longer to fear persecution, had still to fight in order to win respect for religious liberty, which was unceasingly threatened by their adversaries. Numerous were the cases tried at this epoch in order to obtain justice. On the other hand the old union of the reformed churches had ceased to exist since the revolution of July. Ecclesiastical strife broke out and has never entirely ceased. A schism occurred first in 1848, owing to the refusal of the synod to draw up a profession of faith, the comte de Gasparin and the pastor Frédéric Monod seceding and founding the Union des Églises Évangéliques de France, separated from the state, of which later on E. de Pressensé was to become the most famous pastor. Under the Second Empire (1852-1870) the divisions between the orthodox and the liberal thinkers were accentuated; they resulted in a separation which followed on the reassembly of the national synod, authorized in 1872 by the government of the Third Republic. The old Huguenot church was thus separated into two parts, having no other link than that of the Concordat of 1802 and each possessing its own peculiar organization.
The descendants of the Huguenots, however, remained faithful to the traditions of their ancestors, and extolled the great past of the French reform movement. Moreover, in 1859 were held the magnificent religious festivals to celebrate the third centenary of the convocation of their first national synod; and when on the 18th of October 1885 they recalled the 200th anniversary of the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, they were able to assert that the Huguenots had been the first defenders of religious liberties in France. In the early days of the 20th century the work of restoring French Protestantism, which had been pursued with steady perseverance for more than one hundred years, showed great results. This church, which in 1802 had scarcely 100 pastors has seen this number increased to 1000; it possesses more than 900 churches or chapels and 180 presbyteries. In contrast with the poverty of religious life under the First Empire it presented a striking array of Bible societies, missionary societies, and others for evangelical, educational, pastoral and charitable work, which bear witness to a church risen from its ruins. French Protestantism in the course of the 19th century reckoned among its members such eminent theologians as Timothée Colani (1824-1888), who together with Edmond Scherer founded the celebrated Revue de théologie de Strasbourg (1850); Edmond de Pressensé, editor of the Revue chrétienne, Charles Bois and Michel Nicolas, professors of theology at Montauban, Auguste Sabatier, professor of theology at the university of Paris, Albert Réville, professor at the Collège de France, Félix Pécaut, &c.; well-known preachers such as Eugène Bersier, Ernest Dhornbres, Ariste Viguré, Numa Recolin, Auguste de Coppet, and missionaries, for example Eugène Casalis and Coillard; Jean Bost, who founded the hospitals at Laforce; historians like Napoléon Peyrat, the brothers Haag, who wrote La France protestante, François Puaux, Charles Coquerel, Onesime Douen, Henri Bordier, Edouard Sayous, de Félice, Théophile Rollez; Jean Pédézert, Léon Pilatte and others, who were journalists; such statesmen as Guizot, Léon Say, Waddington; such scholars as Cuvier, Broca, Wurtz, Friedel de Quatrefages; such illustrious soldiers and sailors as Rapp, Admirals Baudin, Jauréguiberry, Colonel Denfert-Rochereau. But the population of Protestant France does not exceed 750,000 souls, without counting the Lutherans, who are attached to the Confession of Augsburg, numbering about 75,000. Their chief centres are in the departments of Gard, Ardèche, Drôme, Lozère, the Deux Sèvres and the Seine.
The law of the 9th of December 1905, which separated the church from the state, has been accepted by the great majority of Protestants as a legitimate consequence of the reform principles. Nor has its application given rise to any difficulty with the state. They used their influence only in the direction of rendering the law more liberal and immediately devoted themselves to the organization of their churches under the new régime. If the two great parties, orthodox and liberal, have each their particular constitution, nevertheless a third party has been formed with the object of effecting a reconciliation of all the Protestant churches and of thus reconstituting the old Huguenot church.
Bibliography.—A complete list of works is impossible. The following are the most important:—
General Authorities.—Bulletin de la société de l’histoire du protestantisme français (54 vols.), a most valuable collection, indispensable as a work of reference; Haag, La France protestante, lives of French Protestants (10 vols., 1846; 2nd ed., Henri Bordier, 6 vols., 1887); F. Puaux, Histoire de la Réformation française (7 vols., 1858) and articles “Calvin” and “France protestante” in Encyclopédie des sciences religieuses of Lichtenberger; Smedley, History of the Reformed Religion in France (3 vols., London, 1832); Browning, History of the Huguenots (1 vol., 1840); G. A. de Félice, Histoire des protestants de France (1874).
Special Periods. The 16th Century.—H. M. Baird, The Huguenots and Henry of Navarre (2 vols., New York, 1886), and History of the Rise of the Huguenots of France (New York, 1879); A. W. Whitehead, Gaspard de Coligny (London, 1904); J. W. Thompson, The Wars of Religion in France, 1559-1576 (1909); Th. Beza, Histoire ecclésiastique des églises réformées au royaume de France (3 vols., Antwerp, 1580; new edition by G. Baum et Cunitz, 1883); Crespin, Histoire des martyrs persécutés et mis à mort pour la vérité de l’évangile (2 vols. in fol., Geneva, 1619; abridged translation by Rev. A. Maddock, London, 1780); Pierre de la Place, Commentaires sur l’état de la religion et de la république (1565); Florimond de Raemond, L’Histoire de la naissance, progrès et décadence de l’hérésie du siècle (1610); De Thou, Histoire universelle (16 vols.); Th. Agrippa D’Aubigné, Histoire universelle (3 vols., Geneva, 1626); Hermingard, Correspondance des réformateurs dans les pays de la langue française (8 vols., 1866), a scholarly work and the most trustworthy source for the history of the origin of French reform. “Calvini opera” in the Corpus reformatorum, edited by Reuss, Baum and Cunitz, particularly the correspondence, vols. x. to xxii.; Doumergue, Jean Calvin, les hommes et les choses de son temps (3 vols., 1899); G. von Polenz, Geschichte des französischen Calvinismus (5 vols., 1857); Étienne A. Laval, Compendious history of the reformation in France and of the reformed Church in that Kingdom from the first beginning of the Reformation to the Repealing of the Edict of Nantes (7 vols., London, 1737-1741); Soldan, Geschichte des Protestantismus in Frankreich bis zum Tode Karls IX. (2 vols., 1855); Merle D’Aubigné, Histoire de la réformation en Europe au temps de Calvin (5 vols., 1863).
17th Century.—Élie Benoit, Histoire de l’Édit de Nantes (5 vols., Delft, 1693), a work of the first rank; Aymon, Tous les synodes nationaux des églises réformées de France (2 vols.); J. Quick, Synodicon (2 vols., London, 1692), important for the ecclesiastical history of French Protestantism; D’Huisseau, La Discipline des églises réformées de France (Amsterdam, 1710); H. de Rohan, Mémoires ... jusqu’en 1629 (Amsterdam, 1644); Jean Claude, Les Plaintes des Protestans de France (Cologne, 1686, new edition with notes by Frank Puaux, Paris, 1885); Pierre Jurieu, Lettres pastorales (3 vols., Rotterdam, 1688); Brousson, État des Réformés de France (3 vols., The Hague, 1685); Anquez, Histoire des assemblées politiques des réformés de France (1 vol., Paris, 1859); Pilatte, Édits et arrêts concernant la religion prétendue réformée, 1662-1711 (1889); Douen, Les Premiers pasteurs du Désert (2 vols., 1879); H. M. Baird, The Huguenots and The Revocation of the Edict of Nantes (2 vols., New York).
18th Century.—Peyrat, Histoire des pasteurs du Désert (2 vols., 1842); Ch. Coquerel, Histoire des églises du Désert (2 vols., 1841); E. Hugues, Antoine Court, Histoire de la restauration du protestantisme en France (2 vols., 1872); Les Synodes du Désert (3 vols., 1875); A. Coquerel, Jean Calas (1869); Court de Gebelin, Les Toulousaines (1763).
19th Century.—Die protestantische Kirche Frankreichs (2 vols., 1848); Annuaire de Rabaut 1807, de Soulier 1827, de De Prat 1862, (1878); Agenda protestant de Frank Puaux (1880-1894); Agenda annuaire protestant de Gambier (1895-1907); Bersier, Histoire du Synode de 1872 (2 vols.); Frank Puaux, Les Œuvres du protestantisme français au XIXe siècle. See also Camisards, Calvin, Edict of Nantes.
(F. Px.)
HUGUES, CLOVIS (1851-1907), French poet and socialist, was born at Menerbes in Vaucluse on the 3rd of November 1851. He studied for the priesthood, but did not take orders. For some revolutionary articles in the local papers of Marseilles he was condemned in 1871 to three years’ imprisonment and a fine of 6000 francs. In 1877 he fought a duel in which he killed his adversary, a rival journalist. Elected deputy by Marseilles in the general elections of 1881, he was at that time the sole representative of the Socialist party in the chambers. He was re-elected in 1885, and in 1893 became one of the deputies for Paris, retaining his seat until 1906. He died on the 11th of June 1907.
His poems, novels and comedies are full of wit and exuberant vitality.
His principal works are: Poèmes de prison (1875), written during his detention, Soirs de bataille (1883); Jours de combat (1883); and Le Travail (1889); the novels, Madame Phaéton (1885) and Monsieur le gendarme (1891); and the dramas, Une étoile (1888) and Le sommeil de Danton (1888).
HUICHOL (pronounced Veetchol—a corruption of the native name Vishalika or Virarika, doctors or healers), a tribe of Mexican Indians living in a mountainous region on the eastern side of the Chapalagana river, Jalisco. Huichol tradition assigns the south as their place of origin. Their name of “healers” is deserved, for about one-fourth of the men are Shamans. The Huichols are in much the same social condition as at the time of the Aztec empire. They were conquered by the Spaniards in 1722.
For full description of the people and their habits see Carl Lumholtz, Unknown Mexico (1903).
HUITZILOPOCHTLI, the supreme being in the religions of ancient Mexico, and as a specialized deity, the god of war. He was the mythic leader and chief divinity of the Aztecs, dominant tribe of the Nahua nation. As a humming-bird Huitzilopochtli was alleged to have led the Aztecs to a new home. E. B. Tylor (Primitive Culture, 4th ed., vol. ii. p. 307) calls him an “inextricable compound parthenogenetic deity”; and finds, in the fact that his chief festival (when his paste idol was shot through with an arrow, and afterwards eaten) was at the winter solstice, ground for believing that he was at first a nature-god, whose life and death were connected with the year’s. His idol was a huge block of basalt (still thought to be preserved in Mexico), on one side of which he is sculptured in hideous form, adorned with the feathers of the humming-bird. The ceremonies of his worship were of the most bloodthirsty character, and hundreds of human beings were murdered annually before his shrine, their limbs being eaten by his worshippers. When his temple was dedicated in 1486 it is traditionally reported that 70,000 people were killed. See Mexico.
HULDA, in Teutonic mythology, goddess of marriage. She was a beneficent deity, the patroness and guardian of all maidens (see Berchta).
HULKE, JOHN WHITAKER (1830-1895), British surgeon and geologist, was born on the 6th of November 1830, being the son of a well-known medical practitioner at Deal. He was educated partly at a boarding-school in this country, partly at the Moravian College at Neuwied (1843-1845), where he gained an intimate knowledge of German and an interest in geology through visits to the Eifel district. He then entered King’s College school, and three years later commenced work at the hospital, becoming M.R.C.S. in 1852. In the Crimean War he volunteered, and was appointed (1855) assistant-surgeon at Smyrna and subsequently at Sebastopol. On returning home he became medical tutor at his old hospital, was elected F.R.C.S. in 1857, and afterwards assistant-surgeon to the Royal Ophthalmic Hospital, Moorfields (1857), and surgeon (1868-1890). In 1870 he became surgeon at the Middlesex hospital, and here much of his more important surgical work was accomplished. His skill as an operator was widely known: he was an excellent general surgeon, but made his special mark as an ophthalmologist, while as a geologist he attained a European reputation. He was elected F.R.S. in 1867 for his researches on the anatomy and physiology of the retina in man and the lower animals, particularly the reptiles. He subsequently devoted all his spare time to geology and especially to the fossile reptilia, describing many remains of Dinosaurs, to our knowledge of which as well as of other Saurians he largely contributed. In 1887 the Wollaston medal was awarded to him by the Geological Society of London. He was president of both the Geological and Pathological Societies in 1883, and president of the Royal College of Surgeons from 1893 until his death. He was a man with a wide range of knowledge not only of science but of literature and art. He died in London on the 19th of February 1895.
HULL, ISAAC (1775-1843), commodore in the U.S. navy, was born at Derby in Connecticut on the 9th of March 1775. He went to sea young in the merchant service and was in command of a vessel at the age of nineteen. In 1798 he was appointed lieutenant in the newly organized U.S. navy. From 1803 to 1805 he served in the squadron sent to chastise the Barbary pirates as commander of the “Enterprise,” but was transferred to the “Argus” in November of 1803. When the War of 1812 broke out he was captain of the U.S. frigate “Constitution” (44), and was on a mission to Europe carrying specie for the payment of a debt in Holland. The “Constitution” was shadowed by British men-of-war, but was not attacked. In July of that year, however, he was pursued by a squadron of British vessels, and escaped by good seamanship and the fine sailing qualities of the “Constitution.” He was to have been superseded, but put to sea before the officer who was to have relieved him arrived—an action which might have been his ruin if he had not signalized his cruise by the capture of the British frigate “Guerrière” (38). Captain Hull had been cruising off the Gulf of St Lawrence, and the engagement, which took place on the 19th of August, was fought south of the Grand Bank. The “Constitution” was a fine ship of 1533 tons, originally designed for a two-decker, but cut down to a frigate. The “Guerrière” was of 1092 tons and very ill-manned, while the “Constitution” had a choice crew. The British ship was easily overpowered. Hull received a gold medal for the capture of the “Guerrière,” but had no further opportunity of distinction in the war. After the peace he held a variety of commands at sea, and was a naval commissioner from 1815 to 1817. He had a high reputation in the United States navy for practical seamanship. He died at Philadelphia on the 13th of February 1843.
HULL, a city (1875) and railway junction of the province of Quebec, Canada, and the capital of Wright county, opposite the city of Ottawa. Pop. (1901) 13,988. The magnificent water-power of the Chaudière Falls of the Ottawa is utilized for the lighting of the city, the operation of a system of electric railways connecting Hull with Ottawa and Aylmer, and a number of large saw-mills, pulp, paper and match manufactories. Hull has gone through several disastrous fires, but since that of 1900, which swept out most of the town, an efficient system of fire protection has been established. Three bridges unite Ottawa and Hull. The city is governed by a council composed of a mayor and twelve aldermen elected annually. Champlain was the first white man to set foot on the site of Hull, but long before he came it was a favourite meeting-place for the Indians. Later it became familiar to explorers and fur-traders as the foot of the Chaudière portage, and many a canoe has been carried shoulder high over the site of future busy streets. Philemon Wright, of Woburn, Massachusetts, was the first man to settle here in 1800. The report he sent back was so favourable that a number of other families followed from the same place and laid the foundations of the future city. His descendants have remained among the substantial men of the town.
HULL (officially Kingston-upon-Hull), a city and county of a city, municipal, county and parliamentary borough, and seaport in the East Riding of Yorkshire, England, at the junction of the river Hull with the Humber, 22 m. from the open sea, and 181 m. N. of London. Pop. (1891) 200,472; (1901) 240,259. Its full name, not in general use, is Kingston-upon-Hull. It is served by the North Eastern, Great Central and Hull & Barnsley railways, the principal station being Paragon Street. The town stands on a level plain so low as to render embankments necessary to prevent inundation. The older portion is completely enclosed by the Hull and Humber on the E. and S. and by docks on the N. and W. Here are narrow streets typical of the medieval mercantile town, though modern improvements have destroyed some of them; and there are a few ancient houses. In Holy Trinity church Hull possesses one of the largest English parish churches, having an extreme length of 272 ft. It is cruciform and has a massive central tower. This and the transepts and choir are of Decorated work of various dates. The choir is largely constructed of brick, and thus affords an unusually early example of the use of this material in English ecclesiastical architecture. The nave is Perpendicular, a fine example of the style. William Mason the poet (1725-1797) was the son of a rector of the parish. The church of St Mary, Lowgate, was founded in the 14th century, but is almost wholly a reconstruction. Modern churches are numerous, but of no remarkable architectural merit. Among public buildings the town-hall, in Lowgate, ranks first. It was completed in 1866, but was subsequently extended and in great part rebuilt; it is in Italian renaissance style, having a richly adorned façade. The exchange, in the same street, was also completed in 1866, in a less ornate Italian style. There are also theatres, a chamber of commerce, corn exchange, market-hall, custom-house, and the dock offices, a handsome Italian building. The principal intellectual institution is the Royal Institution, a fine classical building opened by Albert, prince consort, in 1854, and containing a museum and large library. It accommodates the Literary and Philosophical Society. The grammar school was founded in 1486. One of its masters was Joseph Milner (1744-1797), author of a history of the Church; and among its students were Andrew Marvell the poet (1621-1678) and William Wilberforce the philanthropist (1759-1833), who is commemorated by a column and statue near the dock offices, and by the preservation of the house of his birth in High Street. This house belongs to the corporation and was opened in 1906 as the Wilberforce and Historical Museum. There are also to be mentioned the Hull and East Riding College, Hymer’s College, comprising classical, modern and junior departments, the Trinity House marine school (1716), the Humber industrial school ship “Southampton,” and technical and art schools. Charities and benevolent foundations are numerous. Trinity House is a charity for seamen of the merchant service; the building (1753) was founded by the Trinity House Gild instituted in 1369, and contains a noteworthy collection of paintings and a museum. The Charterhouse belongs to a foundation for the support of the old and feeble, established by Sir Michael de la Pole, afterwards earl of Suffolk, in 1384. The infirmary was founded in 1782. Of the three parks, Pearson Park was presented by a mayor of that name in 1860, and contains statues of Queen Victoria and the Prince Consort. A botanic garden was opened in 1880.
The original harbour occupied that part of the river Hull which faced the old town, but in 1774 an act was passed for forming a dock on the site of the old fortifications on the right bank of the Hull. This afterwards became known as Queen’s dock, and with Prince’s and Humber docks completes the circle round the old town. The small railway dock opens from Humber dock. East of the Hull lie the Victoria dock and extensive timber ponds, and west of the Humber dock basin, parallel to the Humber, is Albert dock. Others are the Alexandra, St Andrew’s and fish docks. The total area of the docks is about 186 acres, and the owning companies are the North Eastern and the Hull & Barnsley railways. The ports of Hull and Goole (q.v.) have been administratively combined since 1888, the conservancy of the river being under the Humber Conservancy Board. Hull is one of the principal shipping ports for the manufactures of Yorkshire and Lancashire, and has direct communication with the coal-fields of the West Riding. Large quantities of grain are imported from Russia, America, &c., and of timber from Norway and Sweden. Iron, fish, butter and fruit are among other principal imports. The port was an early seat of the whale fisheries. Of passenger steamship services from Hull the principal are those to the Norwegian ports, which are greatly frequented during the summer; these, with others to the ports of Sweden, &c., are in the hands of the large shipping firm of Thomas Wilson & Co. A ferry serves New Holland, on the Lincolnshire shore (Great Central railway). The principal industries of Hull are iron-founding, shipbuilding and engineering, and the manufacture of chemicals, oil-cake, colours, cement, paper, starch, soap and cotton goods; and there are tanneries and breweries.
The parliamentary borough returns three members, an increase from two members in 1885. Hull became the seat of a suffragan bishop in the diocese of York in 1891. This was a revival, as the office was in existence from 1534 till the death of Edward VI. The county borough was created in 1888. The city is governed by a mayor, 16 aldermen and 48 councillors. Area, 8989 acres.
The first mention of Hull occurs under the name of Wyke-upon-Hull in a charter of 1160 by which Maud, daughter of Hugh Camin, granted it to the monks of Meaux, who in 1278 received licence to hold a market here every Thursday and a fair on the vigil, day and morrow of Holy Trinity and twelve following days. Shortly afterwards Edward I., seeing its value as a port, obtained the town from the monks in exchange for other lands in Lincolnshire and changed its name to Kingston-upon-Hull. To induce people to settle here he gave the town a charter in 1299. This granted two weekly markets on Tuesday and Friday and a fair on the eve of St Augustine lasting thirty days; it made the town a free borough and provided that the king would send his justices to deliver the prison when necessary. He sent commissioners in 1303 to inquire how and where the roads to the “new town of Kingston-upon-Hull” could best be made, and in 1321 Edward II. granted the burgesses licence to enclose the town with a ditch and “a wall of stone and lime.” In the 14th century the burgesses of Hull disputed the right of the archbishop of York to prisage of wine and other liberties in Hull, which they said belonged to the king. The archbishop claimed under charters of King Æthelstand and Henry III. The dispute, after lasting several years, was at length decided in favour of the king. In 1381 Edward III., while inspecting former charters, granted that the burgesses might hold the borough with fairs, markets and free customs at a fee-farm of £70, and that every year they might choose a mayor and four bailiffs. The king in 1440 granted the burgesses Hessle, North Ferriby and other places in order that they might obtain a supply of fresh water. The charter also granted that the above places with the town itself should become the county of the town of Kingston-upon-Hull. Henry VIII. visited the town in 1541, and ordered that a castle and other places of defence should be built, and Edward VI. in 1552 granted the manor to the burgesses. The town was incorporated by Queen Elizabeth in 1576 and a new charter was granted by James II. in 1688. During the civil wars Hull, although the majority of the inhabitants were royalists, was garrisoned by the parliamentarians, and Charles I. was refused admission by the governor Sir John Hotham. In 1643 it stood a siege of six weeks, but the new governor Ferdinando Fairfax, 2nd Baron Fairfax, obliged the Royalist army to retreat by opening the sluices and placing the surrounding country under water. Hull was represented in the parliament of 1295 and has sent members ever since, save that in 1384 the burgesses were exempted from returning any member on account of the expenses which they were incurring through fortifying their town. Besides the fairs granted to the burgesses by Edward I., two others were granted by Charles II. in 1664 to Henry Hildiard who owned property in the town.
See T. Gent, Annales Regioduni Hullini (York, 1735, reprinted 1869); G. Hadley, History of the Town and County of Kingston-upon-Hull (Hull, 1788); C. Frost, Notices relative to the Early History of the Town and Port of Hull (London, 1827); J. J. Sheaham, General and Concise History of Kingston-upon-Hull (London and Beverley, 1864).
HULL (in O. Eng. hulu, from helan, to cover, cf. Ger. Hülle, covering), the outer covering, pod, or shell of beans, peas, &c., also the enclosing envelope of a chrysalis. The word may be the same as “hull,” meaning the body of a ship without its masts or superstructure, &c., but in this sense the word is more usually connected with “hold,” the interior cargo-carrying part of a vessel. This word was borrowed, as a nautical term, from the Dutch, hol (cognate with “hole”), the d being due to confusion with “to hold,” “grasp” (O. Eng. healdan). The meanings of “hull” and “hold” are somewhat far apart, and the closest sense resemblance is to the word “hulk,” which is not known till about a century later.
HULLAH, JOHN PYKE (1812-1884), English composer and teacher of music, was born at Worcester on the 27th June 1812. He was a pupil of William Horsley from 1829, and entered the Royal Academy of Music in 1833. He wrote an opera to words by Dickens, The Village Coquettes, produced in 1836; The Barbers of Bassora in 1837, and The Outpost in 1838, the last two at Covent Garden. From 1839, when he went to Paris to investigate various systems of teaching music to large masses of people, he identified himself with Wilhem’s system of the “fixed Do,” and his adaptation of that system was taught with enormous success from 1840 to 1860. In 1847 a large building in Long Acre, called St Martin’s Hall, was built by subscription and presented to Hullah. It was inaugurated in 1850 and burnt to the ground in 1860, a blow from which Hullah was long in recovering. He had risked his all in the maintenance of the building, and had to begin the world again. A series of lectures was given at the Royal Institution in 1861, and in 1864 he lectured in Edinburgh, but in the following year was unsuccessful in his application for the Reid professorship. He conducted concerts in Edinburgh in 1866 and 1867, and the concerts of the Royal Academy of Music from 1870 to 1873; he had been elected to the committee of management in 1869. In 1872 he was appointed by the Council of Education musical inspector of training schools for the United Kingdom. In 1878 he went abroad to report on the condition of musical education in schools, and wrote a very valuable report, quoted in the memoir of him published by his wife in 1886. He was attacked by paralysis in 1880, and again in 1883. His compositions, which remained popular for some years after his death in 1884, consisted mainly of ballads; but his importance in the history of music is owing to his exertions in popularizing musical education, and his persistent opposition to the Tonic Sol-Fa system, which had a success he could not foresee. His objections to it were partly grounded on the character of the music which was in common use among the early teachers of the system. While it cannot be doubted that Hullah would have won more success if he had not opposed the Tonic Sol-Fa movement so strenuously, it must be confessed that his work was of great value, for he kept constantly in view and impressed upon all who followed him or learnt from him the supreme necessity of maintaining the artistic standard of the music taught and studied, and of not allowing trumpery compositions to usurp the place of good music on account of the greater ease with which they could be read.
HULME, WILLIAM (1631-1691), English philanthropist, was born in the neighbourhood of Manchester, and died on the 29th of October 1691. Having lost his only son Banastre, Hulme left his property in trust to maintain “four exhibitioners of the poorest sort of bachelors for the space of four years” at Brasenose College, Oxford. This was the beginning of the Hulme Trust. Its property was in Manchester, and owing to its favourable situation its value increased rapidly. Eventually in 1881 a scheme was drawn up by the charity commissioners, by which (as amended in 1907) the trust is now governed. Its income of about £10,000 a year is devoted to maintaining the Hulme Grammar School in Manchester and to assisting other schools, to supporting a theological college, Hulme Hall, attached to the university of Manchester, and to providing a number of scholarships and exhibitions at Brasenose College.
See J. Croston, Hulme’s Charity (1877).
HÜLS, a town of Germany, in the Prussian Rhine province, 4 m. N. of Crefeld and 17 N.W. of Düsseldorf by rail. Pop. (1905) 6510. It has two Roman Catholic churches, a synagogue and manufactures of damask and velvet. In the neighbourhood ironstone is obtained.
HULSE, JOHN (1708-1790), English divine, was born—the eldest of a family of nineteen—at Middlewich, in Cheshire, in 1708. Entering St John’s College, Cambridge, in 1724, he graduated in 1728; and on taking orders (in 1732) was presented to a small country curacy. His father having died in 1753, Hulse succeeded to his estates in Cheshire, where, owing to feeble health, he lived in retirement till his death in December 1790. He bequeathed his estates to Cambridge University for the purpose of maintaining two divinity scholars (£30 a year each) at St John’s College, of founding a prize for a dissertation, and of instituting the offices of Christian advocate and of Christian preacher or Hulsean lecturer. By a statute in 1860 the Hulsean professorship of divinity was substituted for the office of Christian advocate, and the lectureship was considerably modified. The first course of lectures under the benefaction was delivered in 1820. In 1830 the number of annual lectures or sermons was reduced from twenty to eight; after 1861 they were further reduced to a minimum of four. The annual value of the Hulse endowment is between £800 and £900, of which eight-tenths go to the professor of divinity and one-tenth to the prize and lectureship respectively.
An account of the Hulsean lectures from 1820 to 1894 is given in J. Hunt’s Religious Thought in the 19th Century, 332-338; among the lecturers have been Henry Alford (1841), R. C. Trench (1845), Christopher Wordsworth (1847), Charles Merivale (1861), James Moorhouse (1865), F. W. Farrar (1870), F. J. A. Hort (1871), W. Boyd Carpenter (1878), W. Cunningham (1885), M. Creighton (1893).
HUMACAO, a small city and the capital of a municipal district and department of the same name, in Porto Rico, 46 m. S.E. of San Juan. Pop. (1899) of the city, 4428; and of the municipal district, 14,313. Humacao is attractively situated near the E. coast, 9 m. from the port of Naguabo and a little over 6 m. from its own port of Punta Santiago, with which it is connected by a good road; a railway was under construction in 1908, and some of the sugar factories of the department are now connected by rail with the port. The department covers the eastern end of the island and includes all the islands off its coast, among which are Culebra and Vieques; the former (pop. in 1899, 704) has two excellent harbours and is used as a U.S. naval station; the latter is 21 m. long by 6 m. wide and in 1899 had a population of nearly 6000. Grazing is the principal industry, but sugar-cane, tobacco and fruit are cultivated. There are valuable forests in the mountainous districts, a part of which has been set aside for preservation under the name of the Luquillo forest reserve. Humacao was incorporated as a city in 1899. It suffered severely in the hurricane of 1898, the damage not having been fully repaired as late as 1906.
HUMANE SOCIETY, ROYAL. This society was founded in England in 1774 for the purpose of rendering “first aid” in cases of drowning and for restoring life by artificial means to those apparently drowned. Dr William Hawes (1736-1808), an English physician, became known in 1773 for his efforts to convince the public that persons apparently dead from drowning might in many cases be resuscitated by artificial means. For a year he paid a reward out of his own pocket to any one bringing him a body rescued from the water within a reasonable time of immersion. Dr Thomas Cogan (1736-1818), another English physician, who had become interested in the same subject during a stay at Amsterdam, where was instituted in 1767 a society for preservation of life from accidents in water, joined Hawes in his crusade. In the summer of 1774 each of them brought fifteen friends to a meeting at the Chapter Coffee-house, St Paul’s Churchyard, when the Royal Humane Society was founded. The society, the chief offices of which are at 4 Trafalgar Square, London, has upwards of 280 depôts throughout the kingdom, supplied with life-saving apparatus. The chief and earliest of these depôts is the Receiving House in Hyde Park, on the north bank of the Serpentine, which was built in 1794 on a site granted by George III. Boats and boatmen are kept to render aid to bathers, and in the winter ice-men are sent round to the different skating grounds in and around London. The society distributes money-rewards, medals, clasps and testimonials, to those who save or attempt to save drowning people. It further recognizes “all cases of exceptional bravery in rescuing or attempting to rescue persons from asphyxia in mines, wells, blasting furnaces, or in sewers where foul gas may endanger life.” It further awards prizes for swimming to public schools and training ships. Since 1873 the Stanhope gold medal has been awarded “to the case exhibiting the greatest gallantry during the year.” During the year 1905 873 persons were rewarded for saving or attempting to save 947 lives from drowning. The society is maintained by private subscriptions and bequests. Its motto is Lateat scintillula forsan, “a small spark may perhaps lie hid.” (See also Drowning and Life-Saving.)
HUMANISM (from Lat. humanus, human, connected with homo, mankind), in general any system of thought or action which assigns a predominant interest to the affairs of men as compared with the supernatural or the abstract. The term is specially applied to that movement of thought which in western Europe in the 15th century broke through the medieval traditions of scholastic theology and philosophy, and devoted itself to the rediscovery and direct study of the ancient classics. This movement was essentially a revolt against intellectual, and especially ecclesiastical authority, and is the parent of all modern developments whether intellectual, scientific or social (see Renaissance). The term has also been applied to the philosophy of Comte in virtue of its insistence on the dignity of humanity and its refusal to find in the divine anything external or superior to mankind, and the same tendency has had marked influence over the development of modern Christian theology which inclines to obliterate the old orthodox conception of the separate existence and overlordship of God. The narrow sense of the term survives in modern university terminology. Thus in the University of Oxford the curriculum known as Litterae Humaniores (“Humane Literature”) consists of Latin and Greek literature and philosophy, i.e. of the “arts,” often described in former times as the “polite letters.” In the Scottish universities the professor of Latin is called the professor of “humanity.” The plural “humanities” is a generic term for the classics. In ordinary language the adjective “humane” is restricted to the sense of “kind-hearted,” “unselfish”: the abstract “humanity” has this sense and also the sense of “that which pertains to mankind” derived in this case with the companion adjective “human.”
HUMANITARIANS, a term applied (1) to a school of theologians who repudiate the doctrine of the Trinity and hold an extreme view of the person of Christ as simply human. The adoption of this position by men like Nathaniel Lardner, Joseph Priestley and Theophilus Lindsey in the middle of the 18th century led to the establishment of the first definitely organized Unitarian churches in England. (2) It is also applied to those who believe in the perfectibility of man apart from superhuman aid, especially those who follow the teaching of Pierre Leroux (q.v.). The name is also sometimes given to the Positivists, and in a more general sense, to persons whose chief principle of action is the desire to preserve others from pain and discomfort.
HUMAYUN (1508-1556), Mogul emperor of Delhi, succeeded his father Baber in India in 1530, while his brother Kamran obtained the sovereignty of Kabul and Lahore. Humayun was thus left in possession of his father’s recent conquests, which were in dispute with the Indian Afghans under Sher Shah, governor of Bengal. After ten years of fighting, Humayun was driven out of India and compelled to flee to Persia through the desert of Sind, where his famous son, Akbar the Great, was born in the petty fort of Umarkot (1542). Sher Shah was killed at the storming of Kalinjar (1545), and Humayun, returning to India with Akbar, then only thirteen years of age, defeated the Indo-Afghan army and reoccupied Delhi (1555). India thus passed again from the Afghanis to the Moguls, but six months afterwards Humayun was killed by a fall from the parapet of his palace (1556), leaving his kingdom to Akbar. The tomb of Humayun is one of the finest Mogul monuments in the neighbourhood of Delhi, and it was here that the last of the Moguls, Bahadur Shah, was captured by Major Hodson in 1857.