Read Ebook: Encyclopaedia Britannica 11th Edition Hero to Hindu Chronology Volume 13 Slice 4 by Various

Font size: 10 px 15 px 20 px 25 px 30 px 35 px

Background color: BlackWhiteGrayLight GrayDark GrayDim Gray

Text color: BlackWhiteGrayLight GrayDark GrayDim Gray

Apply/Save settings

Ebook has 379 lines and 170767 words, and 8 pages

orthumberland, but not till 1847, nine years after the author's return to England, for the cogent reason, that as he said, "The whole of the observations, as well as the entire work of reducing, arranging and preparing them for the press, have been executed by myself." There are 164 pages of catalogues of southern nebulae and clusters of stars. There are then careful and elaborate drawings of the great nebula in Orion, and of the region surrounding the remarkable star in Argo. The labour and the thought bestowed upon some of these objects are almost incredible; several months were spent upon a minute spot in the heavens containing 1216 stars, but which an ordinary spangle, held at a distance of an arm's length, would eclipse. These catalogues and charts being completed, he proceeded to discuss their significance. He confirmed his father's hypothesis that these wonderful masses of glowing vapours are not irregularly scattered over the visible heavens, but are collected in a sort of canopy, whose vertex is at the pole of that vast stratum of stars in which our solar system finds itself buried, as Herschel supposed, at a depth not greater than that of the average distance from us of an eleventh magnitude star. Then follows his catalogue of the relative positions and magnitudes of the southern double stars, to one of which, Virginis, he applied the beautiful method of orbital determination invented by himself, and he had the satisfaction of witnessing the fulfilment of his prediction that the components would, in the course of their revolution, appear to close up into a single star, inseparable by any telescopic power. In the next chapter he proceeded to describe his observations on the varying and relative brightness of the stars. It has been already detailed how his father began his scientific career by similar observations on stellar light-fluctuations, and how his remarks culminated years afterwards in the question whether the radiative changes of our sun, due to the presence or absence of sun-spots, affected our harvests and the price of corn. Sir John carried speculation still farther, pointing out that variations to the extent of half a magnitude in the sun's brightness would account for those strange alternations of semi-arctic and semi-tropical climates which geological researches show to have occurred in various regions of our globe.

A complete list of his contributions to learned societies will be found in the Royal Society's great catalogue, and from them may be gathered most of the records of his busy scientific life. Sir John Herschel met with an amount of public recognition which was unusual in the time of his illustrious father. Naturally he was a member of almost every important learned society in both hemispheres. For five years he held the same office of master of the mint, which more than a century before had belonged to Sir Isaac Newton; his friends also offered to propose him as president of the Royal Society and again as member of parliament for the university of Cambridge, but neither position was desired by him.

In private life Sir John Herschel was a firm and most active friend; he had no jealousies; he avoided all scientific feuds; he gladly lent a helping hand to those who consulted him in scientific difficulties; he never discouraged, and still less disparaged, men younger than or inferior to himself; he was pleased by appreciation of his work without being solicitous for applause; it was said of him by a discriminating critic, and without extravagance, that "his was a life full of serenity of the sage and the docile innocence of a child."

He died at Collingwood, his residence near Hawkhurst in Kent, on the 11th of May 1871, in the seventy-ninth year of his age, and his remains are interred in Westminster Abbey close to the grave of Sir Isaac Newton.

HERSCHELL, FARRER HERSCHELL, 1ST BARON , lord chancellor of England, was born on the 2nd of November 1837. His father was the Rev. Ridley Haim Herschell, a native of Strzelno, in Prussian Poland, who, when a young man, exchanged the Jewish faith for Christianity, took a leading part in founding the British Society for the Propagation of the Gospel among the Jews, and, after many journeyings, settled down to the charge of a Nonconformist chapel near the Edgware Road, in London, where he ministered to a large congregation. His mother was a daughter of William Mowbray, a merchant of Leith. He was educated at a private school and at University College, London. In 1857 he took his B.A. degree at the University of London. He was reckoned the best speaker in the school debating society, and he displayed there the same command of language and lucidity of thought which were his characteristics during his official life. The reputation which Herschell enjoyed during his school days was maintained after he became a law-student at Lincoln's Inn. In 1858 he entered the chambers of Thomas Chitty, the famous common law pleader, father of the late Lord Justice Chitty. His fellow pupils, amongst whom were A. L. Smith, afterwards master of the rolls, and Arthur Charles, afterwards judge of the queen's bench division, gave him the sobriquet of "the chief baron" in recognition of his superiority. He subsequently read with James Hannen, afterwards Lord Hannen. In 1860 he was called to the bar and joined the northern circuit, then in its palmy days of undividedness. For four or five years he did not obtain much work. Fortunately, he was never a poor man, and so was not forced into journalism, or other paths of literature, in order to earn a living. Two of his contemporaries, each of whom achieved great eminence, found themselves in like case. One of these, Charles Russell, became lord chief justice of England; the other, William Court Gully, speaker of the House of Commons. It is said that these three friends, dining together during a Liverpool assize some years after they had been called, agreed that their prospects were anything but cheerful. Certain it is that about this time Herschell meditated quitting England for Shanghai and practising in the consular courts there. Herschell, however, soon made himself useful to Edward James, the then leader of the northern circuit, and to John Richard Quain, the leading stuff-gownsman. For the latter he was content to note briefs and draft opinions, and when, in 1866, Quain donned "silk," it was on Herschell that a large portion of his mantle descended.

Herschell's public services from 1880 to 1885 were of great value, particularly in dealing with the "cases for opinion" submitted by the Foreign Office and other departments. He was also very helpful in speeding government measures through the House, notably the Irish Land Act 1881, the Corrupt Practices and Bankruptcy Acts 1883, the County Franchise Act 1884 and the Redistribution of Seats Act 1885. This last was a bitter pill for Herschell, since it halved the representation of Durham city, and so gave him statutory notice to quit. Reckoning on the local support of the Cavendish family, he contested the North Lonsdale division of Lancashire; but in spite of the powerful influence of Lord Hartington, he was badly beaten at the poll, though Mr Gladstone again obtained a majority in the country. Herschell now thought he saw the solicitor-generalship slipping away from him, and along with it all prospect of high promotion. Lord Selborne and Sir Henry James, however, successively declined Gladstone's offer of the Woolsack, and in 1886 Herschell, by a sudden turn of fortune's wheel, found himself in his forty-ninth year lord chancellor.

Herschell's chancellorship lasted barely six months, for in August 1886 Gladstone's Home Rule Bill was rejected in the Commons and his administration fell. In August 1892, when Gladstone returned to power, Herschell again became lord chancellor. In September 1893, when the second Home Rule Bill came on for second reading in the House of Lords, Herschell took advantage of the opportunity to justify the "sudden conversion" to Home Rule of himself and his colleagues in 1885 by comparing it to the duke of Wellington's conversion to Catholic Emancipation in 1829 and to that of Sir Robert Peel to Free Trade in 1846. In 1895, however, his second chancellorship came to an end with the defeat of the Rosebery ministry.

HERSFELD, a town of Germany, in the Prussian province of Hesse-Nassau, is pleasantly situated at the confluence of the Geis and Haun with the Fulda, on the railway from Frankfort-on-Main to Bebra, 24 m. N.N.E. of Fulda. Pop. 8688. Some of the old fortifications of the town remain, but the ramparts and ditches have been laid out as promenades. The principal buildings are the Stadt Kirche, a beautiful Gothic building, erected about 1320 and restored in 1899, with a fine tower and a large bell; the old and interesting town hall and the ruins of the abbey church. This church was erected on the site of the cathedral in the beginning of the 12th century; it was built in the Byzantine style and was burnt down by the French in 1761. Outside the town are the Frauenberg and the Johannesberg, on both of which are monastic ruins. Among the public institutions are a gymnasium and a military school. The town has important manufactures of cloth, leather and machinery; it has also dye-works, worsted mills and soap-boiling works.

Hersfeld owes its existence to the Benedictine abbey . It became a town in the 12th century and in 1370 the burghers, having meanwhile shaken off the authority of the abbots, placed themselves under the protection of the landgraves of Hesse. It was taken and retaken during the Thirty Years' War and later it suffered from the attacks of the French.

The Benedictine abbey of Hersfeld was founded by Lullus, afterwards archbishop of Mainz, about 769. It was richly endowed by Charlemagne and became an ecclesiastical principality in the 12th century, passing under the protection of the landgraves of Hesse in 1423. It was secularized in 1648, having been previously administered for some years by a member of the ruling family of Hesse. As a secular principality Hersfeld passed to Hesse, and with electoral Hesse was united with Prussia in 1866. In the middle ages the abbey was famous for its library.

HERTFORD, a market-town and municipal borough, and the county town of Hertfordshire, England, in the Hertford parliamentary division of the county, 24 m. N. from London, the terminus of branch lines of the Great Eastern and Great Northern railways. Pop. 9322. It is pleasantly situated in the valley of the river Lea. The chief buildings are the modern churches of St Andrew and of All Saints, on the sites of old ones, a town hall, corn exchange, public library, school of art and the old castle, which retains the wall and part of a tower dating from the Norman period, and is represented by a picturesque Jacobean building of brick, largely modernized. There are several educational establishments, including the preparatory school for Christ's Hospital, a picturesque building at the east end of the town, Hale's grammar school, the Cowper Testimonial school, and a Green-coat school for boys and girls. Two miles S.E. is Haileybury College, one of the principal public schools of England, founded in 1805 by the East India Company for their civil service students, who were then temporarily housed in Hertford Castle. The school lies high above the Lea valley, towards Hoddesdon, in the midst of a stretch of finely-wooded country. Hertford has a considerable agricultural trade, and there are maltings, breweries, iron foundries, and oriental printing works. The town is governed by a mayor, 5 aldermen and 15 councillors. Area, 1134 acres.

HERTFORDSHIRE , a county of England, bounded N. by Cambridgeshire, N.W. by Bedfordshire, E. by Essex, S. by Middlesex, and S.W. by Buckinghamshire. The area is 634.6 sq. m., the county being the sixth smallest in England. Its aspect is always pleasant, the surface generally undulating, while in some parts, where these undulations form a quick succession of hills and valleys, the woodland scenery becomes very beautiful, as in the upper Lea valley, in the neighbourhood of Tewin near Hertford, and elsewhere. To the north-west and north considerable elevations are reached, a line of hills, facing north-westward with a sharp descent, crossing this portion of the county, and overlooking the flat lands of Bedfordshire and Cambridgeshire. They continue the line of the Chiltern Hills under the name of the East Anglian Ridge. They exceed 800 ft. near Dunstable, sinking gradually north-eastward. These uplands are generally bare, and in parts remarkably sparsely populated as compared with the home counties at large. In the greater part of the county, however, rich arable lands are intermingled with the parks and woodlands of numerous fine country seats, which impart to the county a peculiar luxuriance. Of the principal rivers, the Lea, rising beyond Luton in Bedfordshire, enters Hertfordshire near East Hyde, flows S.E. to near Hatfield, then E. by N. to Hertford and Ware, whence it bends S. and passing along the eastern boundary of the county falls into the Thames below London. It receives in its course the Maran, or Mimram, the Beane, the Rib and the Stort, all joining on the north side; the Stort for some distance forming the county boundary with Essex. The Colne flows through the south-western part of the county, to fall into the Thames at Staines. It receives the Ver, the Bulborne and the Chess. The Ivel, rising in the N.W. soon passes into Bedfordshire to join the Great Ouse. To the south of Hatfield, near North Mimms, two streams of moderate size are lost in pot-holes, except in the highest floods. The New River, one of the water supplies of London, has its source near Ware, and runs roughly parallel with the Lea. Most of the rivers are full of fish, including trout in the upper parts , which are carefully preserved.

As a shire Hertfordshire is of purely military origin, being the district assigned to the fortress which Edward the Elder erected at Hertford. It is first mentioned in the Saxon Chronicle in 1011. At the time of the Domesday Survey the boundaries were approximately those of the present day, but part of Meppershall in Bedfordshire formed a detached portion of the shire and is still assessed for land and income tax in Hertfordshire. Of the nine Domesday hundreds, those of Danais and Tring were consolidated about 1200 under the name of Dacorum; the modern hundred of Cashio, from being held by the abbots of St Albans, was known as Albaneston, while the remaining six hundreds correspond approximately both in name and extent with those of the present day.

Hertfordshire was originally divided between the dioceses of London and Lincoln. In 1291 that part included in the Lincoln diocese formed part of the archdeaconry of Huntingdom and comprised the deaneries of Berkhampstead, Hitchin, Hertford and Baldock, and the archdeaconry and deanery of St Albans; while that part within the London diocese formed the deanery of Braughing within the archdeaconry of Middlesex. In 1535 the jurisdiction of St Albans had been transferred to the London diocese, the division being otherwise unchanged. In 1846 the whole county was placed within the diocese of Rochester and archdeaconry of St Albans, and in the next year the deaneries of Welwyn, Bennington, Buntingford, Bishop Stortford and Ware were created, and that of Braughing abolished. In 1864 the archdeaconries of Rochester and St Albans were united under the name of the archdeaconry of Rochester and St Albans. In 1878 the county was placed in the newly created diocese of St Albans, and formed the archdeaconry of St Albans, the deaneries being unchanged.

Hertfordshire was closely associated with Essex from the time of its first settlement, and the counties paid a joint fee-farm and were united under one sheriff until 1565, the shire-court being held at Hertford. The hundred of St Albans was at an early date constituted a separate liberty, with independent courts and coroners under the control of the abbot; it preserved a separate commission of the peace until 1874, when by act of parliament the county was arranged in two divisions, the eastern division being named Hertford, and the western the liberty of St Albans. These divisions have since been abolished.

Hertfordshire has always been an agricultural county, with few manufactures, and at the time of the Domesday Survey its wealth was derived almost entirely from its rural manors, with their water meadows, woodlands, fisheries paying rent in eels, and water-mills, the shire on its eastern side being noticeably free from waste land. In Norman times the woollen trade was considerable, and the great corn market at Royston has been famous since the reign of Elizabeth. At the time of the Civil War the malting industry was largely carried on, and saltpetre was produced in the county. In the 17th century Hertfordshire was famous for its horses, and the 18th century saw the introduction of several minor industries, such as straw-plaiting, paper-making and silk weaving.

In 1290 Hertfordshire returned two members to parliament, and in 1298 the borough of Hertford was represented. St Albans, Bishop Stortford and Berkhampstead acquired representation in the 14th century, but from 1375 to 1553 no returns were made for the boroughs. St Albans regained representation in 1553 and Hertford in 1623. Under the Reform Act of 1832 the county returned three members. St Albans was disfranchised on account of bribery in 1852. Hertford lost one member in 1868, and was disfranchised by the act of 1885.

HERTHA, or NERTHUS, in Teutonic mythology, the goddess of fertility, "Mother Earth." Tacitus states that many Teutonic tribes worshipped her with orgies and mysterious rites celebrated at night. The chief seat of her cult was an island which has not been identified. A single priest performed the service. Her veiled statue was moved from place to place by sacred cows on which none but the priest might lay hands. At the conclusion of the rites the image, its vestments and its vehicle were bathed in a lake.

Hertzberg's frank and honourable nature little fitted him to be a successful diplomatist; but the course of history has justified many of his aims and ideals, and in Prussia his memory is honoured. He died at Berlin on the 22nd of May 1795.

HERTZEN, ALEXANDER , Russian author, was born at Moscow, a very short time before the occupation of that city by the French. His father, Ivan Yakovlef, after a personal interview with Napoleon, was allowed to leave, when the invaders arrived, as the bearer of a letter from the French to the Russian emperor. His family attended him to the Russian lines. Then the mother of the infant Alexander , only seventeen years old, and quite unable to speak Russian, was forced to seek shelter for some time in a peasant's hut. A year later the family returned to Moscow, where Hertzen passed his youth--remaining there, after completing his studies at the university, till 1834, when he was arrested and tried on a charge of having assisted, with some other youths, at a festival during which verses by Sokolovsky, of a nature uncomplimentary to the emperor, were sung. The special commission appointed to try the youthful culprits found him guilty, and in 1835 he was banished to Viatka. There he remained till the visit to that city of the hereditary grand-duke , accompanied by the poet Joukofsky, led to his being allowed to quit Viatka for Vladimir, where he was appointed editor of the official gazette of that city. In 1840 he obtained a post in the ministry of the interior at St Petersburg; but in consequence of having spoken too frankly about a death due to a police officer's violence, he was sent to Novgorod, where he led an official life, with the title of "state councillor," till 1842. In 1846 his father died, leaving him by his will a very large property. Early in 1847 he left Russia, never to return. From Italy, on hearing of the revolution of 1848, he hastened to Paris, whence he afterwards went to Switzerland. In 1852 he quitted Geneva for London, where he settled for some years. In 1864 he returned to Geneva, and after some time went to Paris, where he died on the 21st of January 1870.

HERZBERG, a town of Germany, in the Prussian province of Hanover, situated under the south-western declivity of the Harz, on the Sieber, 25 m. N.W. from Nordhausen by the railway to Osterode-Hildesheim. Pop. 3896. It contains an Evangelical and a Roman Catholic church, and a botanical garden, and has manufactures of cloth and cigars, and weaving and dyeing works. The breeding of canaries is extensively carried on here and in the district. On a hill to the south-west of the town lies the castle of Herzberg, which in 1157 came into the possession of Henry the Lion, duke of Saxony, and afterwards was one of the residences of a branch of the house of Brunswick.

HERZBERG, a town of Germany, in the Prussian province of Saxony, on the Schwarze Elster, 25 m. S. from J?terbog by the railway Berlin-R?derau-Dresden. It has a church dating from the 13th century and a medieval town hall. Its industries include the founding and turning of metal, agricultural machinery and boot-making. Pop. 4043.

HERZL, THEODOR , founder of modern political Zionism , was born in Budapest on the 2nd of May 1860, and died at Edlach on the 3rd of July 1904. The greater part of his career was associated with Vienna, where he acquired high repute as a literary journalist. He was also a dramatist, and apart from his prominence as a Jewish Nationalist would have found a niche in the temple of fame. All his other claims to renown, however, sink into insignificance when compared with his work as the reviver of Jewish hopes for a restoration to political autonomy. Herzl was stirred by sympathy for the misery of Jews under persecution, but he was even more powerfully moved by the difficulties experienced under conditions of assimilation. Modern anti-Semitism, he felt, was both like and unlike the medieval. The old physical attacks on the Jews continued in Russia, but there was added the reluctance of several national groups in Europe to admit the Jews to social equality. Herzl believed that the humanitarian hopes which inspired men at the end of the 18th and during the larger part of the 19th centuries had failed. The walls of the ghettos had been cast down, but the Jews could find no entry into the comity of nations. The new nationalism of 1848 did not deprive the Jews of political rights, but it denied them both the amenities of friendly intercourse and the opportunity of distinction in the university, the army and the professions. Many Jews questioned this diagnosis, and refused to see in the new anti-Semitism which spread over Europe in 1881 any more than a temporary reaction against the cosmopolitanism of the French Revolution. In 1896 Herzl published his famous pamphlet "Der Judenstaat." Holding that the only alternatives for the Jews were complete merging by intermarriage or self-preservation by a national re-union, he boldly advocated the second course. He did not at first insist on Palestine as the new Jewish home, nor did he attach himself to religious sentiment. The expectation of a Messianic restoration to the Holy Land has always been strong, if often latent, in the Jewish consciousness. But Herzl approached the subject entirely on its secular side, and his solution was economic and political rather than sentimental. He was a strong advocate for the complete separation of Church and State. The influence of Herzl's pamphlet, the progress of the movement he initiated, the subsequent modifications of his plans, are told at length in the article ZIONISM.

His proposals undoubtedly roused an extraordinary enthusiasm, and though he almost completely failed to win to his cause the classes, he rallied the masses with sensational success. He unexpectedly gained the accession of many Jews by race who were indifferent to the religious aspect of Judaism, but he quite failed to convince the leaders of Jewish thought, who from first to last remained deaf to his pleading. The orthodox were at first cool because they had always dreamed of a nationalism inspired by messianic ideals, while the liberals had long come to dissociate those universalistic ideals from all national limitations. Herzl, however, succeeded in assembling several congresses at Basel , and at these congresses were enacted remarkable scenes of enthusiasm for the cause and devotion to its leader. At all these assemblies the same ideal was formulated: "the establishing for the Jewish people a publicly and legally assured home in Palestine." Herzl's personal charm was irresistible. Among his political opponents he had some close personal friends. His sincerity, his eloquence, his tact, his devotion, his power, were recognized on all hands. He spent his whole strength in the furtherance of his ideas. Diplomatic interviews, exhausting journeys, impressive mass meetings, brilliant literary propaganda--all these methods were employed by him to the utmost limit of self-denial. In 1901 he was received by the sultan; the pope and many European statesmen gave him audiences. The British government was ready to grant land for an autonomous settlement in East Africa. This last scheme was fatal to Herzl's peace of mind. Even as a temporary measure, the choice of an extra-Palestinian site for the Jewish state was bitterly opposed by many Zionists; others thought that as Palestine was, at all events momentarily, inaccessible, it was expedient to form a settlement elsewhere. Herzl's health had been failing and he did not long survive the initiation of the somewhat embittered "territorial" controversy. He died in the summer of 1904, amid the consternation of supporters and the deep grief of opponents of his Zionistic aims.

Herzl was beyond question the most influential Jewish personality of the 19th century. He had no profound insight into the problem of Judaism, and there was no lasting validity in his view that the problem--the thousands of years' old mystery--could be solved by a retrogression to local nationality. But he brought home to Jews the perils that confronted them; he compelled many a "semi-detached" son of Israel to rejoin the camp; he forced the "assimilationists" to realize their position and to define it; his scheme gave a new impulse to "Jewish culture," including the popularization of Hebrew as a living speech; and he effectively roused Jews all the world over to an earnest and vital interest in their present and their future. Herzl thus left an indelible mark on his time, and his renown is assured whatever be the fate in store for the political Zionism which he founded and for which he gave his life.

HESIOD, the father of Greek didactic poetry, probably flourished during the 8th century B.C. His father had migrated from the Aeolic Cyme in Asia Minor to Boeotia; and Hesiod and his brother Perses were born at Ascra, near mount Helicon . Here, as he fed his father's flocks, he received his commission from the Muses to be their prophet and poet--a commission which he recognized by dedicating to them a tripod won by him in a contest of song at some funeral games at Chalcis in Euboea, still in existence at Helicon in the age of Pausanias . After the death of his father Hesiod is said to have left his native land in disgust at the result of a law-suit with his brother and to have migrated to Naupactus. There was a tradition that he was murdered by the sons of his host in the sacred enclosure of the Nemean Zeus at Oeneon in Locris ; his remains were removed for burial by command of the Delphic oracle to Orchomenus in Boeotia, where the Ascraeans settled after the destruction of their town by the Thespians, and where, according to Pausanias, his grave was to be seen.

Recent editions of Hesiod include the , the contest of song between Homer and Hesiod at the funeral games held in honour of King Amphidamas at Chalcis. This little tract belongs to the time of Hadrian, who is actually mentioned as having been present during its recitation, but is founded on an earlier account by the sophist Alcidamas . Quotations are made from the works of both poets, and, in spite of the sympathies of the audience, the judge decides in favour of Hesiod. Certain biographical details of Homer and Hesiod are also given.

There are translations of the Hesiodic poems in English by Cooke , C. A. Elton , J. Banks , and specially by A. W. Mair, with introduction and appendices ; in German with valuable introductions and notes by R. Peppm?ller and in other modern languages.

FOOTNOTE:

Part of the poem was called Eoiai, because the description of each heroine began with , "or like as."

HESPERIDES, in Greek mythology, maidens who guarded the golden apples which Earth gave Hera on her marriage to Zeus. According to Hesiod they were the daughters of Erebus and Night; in later accounts, of Atlas and Hesperis, or of Phorcys and Ceto . They were usually supposed to be three in number--Aegle, Erytheia, Hesperis ; according to some, four, or even seven. They lived far away in the west at the borders of Ocean, where the sun sets. Hence the sun sails in the golden bowl made by Hephaestus from the abode of the Hesperides to the land where he rises again. According to other accounts their home was among the Hyperboreans. The golden apples grew on a tree guarded by Ladon, the ever-watchful dragon. The sun is often in German and Lithuanian legends described as the apple that hangs on the tree of the nightly heaven, while the dragon, the envious power, keeps the light back from men till some beneficent power takes it from him. Heracles is the hero who brings back the golden apples to mankind again. Like Perseus, he first applies to the Nymphs, who help him to learn where the garden is. Arrived there he slays the dragon and carries the apples to Argos; and finally, like Perseus, he gives them to Athena. The Hesperides are, like the Sirens, possessed of the gift of delightful song. The apples appear to have been the symbol of love and fruitfulness, and are introduced at the marriages of Cadmus and Harmonia and Peleus and Thetis. The golden apples, the gift of Aphrodite to Hippomenes before his race with Atalanta, were also plucked from the garden of the Hesperides.

HESPERUS , the evening star, son or brother of Atlas. According to Diodorus Siculus , he ascended Mount Atlas to observe the motions of the stars, and was suddenly swept away by a whirlwind. Ever afterwards he was honoured as a god, and the most brilliant star in the heavens was called by his name. Although as a mythological personality he is regarded as distinct from Phosphoros or Heosphoros , the morning star or bringer of light, the son of Astraeus and Eos, the two stars were early identified by the Greeks.

HESS, the name of a family of German artists.

HEINRICH MARIA HESS --von Hess, after he received a patent of personal nobility--was born at D?sseldorf and brought up to the profession of art by his father, the engraver Karl Ernst Christoph Hess . Karl Hess had already acquired a name when in 1806 the elector of Bavaria, having been raised to a kingship by Napoleon, transferred the D?sseldorf academy and gallery to Munich. Karl Hess accompanied the academy to its new home, and there continued the education of his children. In time Heinrich Hess became sufficiently master of his art to attract the attention of King Maximilian. He was sent with a stipend to Rome, where a copy which he made of Raphael's Parnassus, and the study of great examples of monumental design, probably caused him to become a painter of ecclesiastical subjects on a large scale. In 1828 he was made professor of painting and director of all the art collections at Munich. He decorated the Aukirche, the Glyptothek and the Allerheiligencapelle at Munich with frescoes; and his cartoons were selected for glass windows in the cathedrals of Cologne and Regensburg. Then came the great cycle of frescoes in the basilica of St Boniface at Munich, and the monumental picture of the Virgin and Child enthroned between the four doctors, and receiving the homage of the four patrons of the Munich churches . His last work, the "Lord's Supper," was found unfinished in his atelier after his death in 1863. Before testing his strength as a composer Heinrich Hess tried genre, an example of which is the Pilgrims entering Rome, now in the Munich gallery. He also executed portraits, and twice had sittings from Thorwaldsen . But his fame rests on the frescoes representing scenes from the Old and New Testaments in the Allerheiligencapelle, and the episodes from the life of St Boniface and other German apostles in the basilica of Munich. Here he holds rank second to none but Overbeck in monumental painting, being always true to nature though mindful of the traditions of Christian art, earnest and simple in feeling, yet lifelike and powerful in expression. Through him and his pupils the sentiment of religious art was preserved and extended in the Munich school.

PETER HESS --afterwards von Hess--was born at D?sseldorf and accompanied his younger brother Heinrich Maria to Munich in 1806. Being of an age to receive vivid impressions, he felt the stirring impulses of the time and became a painter of skirmishes and battles. In 1813-1815 he was allowed to join the staff of General Wrede, who commanded the Bavarians in the military operations which led to the abdication of Napoleon; and there he gained novel experiences of war and a taste for extensive travel. In the course of years he successively visited Austria, Switzerland and Italy. On Prince Otho's election to the Greek throne King Louis sent Peter Hess to Athens to gather materials for pictures of the war of liberation. The sketches which he then made were placed, forty in number, in the Pinakothek, after being copied in wax on a large scale by Nilsen, in the northern arcades of the Hofgarten at Munich. King Otho's entrance into Nauplia was the subject of a large and crowded canvas now in the Pinakothek, which Hess executed in person. From these, and from battlepieces on a scale of great size in the Royal Palace, as well as from military episodes executed for the czar Nicholas, and the battle of Waterloo now in the Munich Gallery, we gather that Hess was a clever painter of horses. His conception of subject was lifelike, and his drawing invariably correct, but his style is not so congenial to modern taste as that of the painters of touch. He finished almost too carefully with thin medium and pointed tools; and on that account he lacked to a certain extent the boldness of Horace Vernet, to whom he was not unaptly compared. He died suddenly, full of honours, at Munich, in April 1871. Several of his genre pictures, horse hunts, and brigand scenes may be found in the gallery of Munich.

HESSE , a grand duchy forming a state of the German empire. It was known until 1866 as Hesse-Darmstadt, the history of which is given under a separate heading below. It consists of two main parts, separated from each other by a narrow strip of Prussian territory. The northern part is the province of Oberhessen; the southern consists of the contiguous provinces of Starkenburg and Rheinhessen. There are also eleven very small exclaves, mostly grouped about Homburg to the south-west of Oberhessen; but the largest is Wimpfen on the north-west frontier of W?rttemberg. Oberhessen is hilly; though of no great elevation it extends over the water-parting between the basins of the Rhine and the Weser, and in the Vogelsberg it has as its culminating point the Taufstein . In the north-west it includes spurs of the Taunus. Between these two systems of hills lies the fertile undulating tract known as the Wetterau, watered by the Wetter, a tributary of the Main. Starkenburg occupies the angle between the Main and the Rhine, and in its south-eastern part includes some of the ranges of the Odenwald, the highest part being the Seidenbucher H?he . Rheinhessen is separated from Starkenburg by the Rhine, and has that river as its northern as well as its eastern frontier, though it extends across it at the north-east corner, where the Rhine, on receiving the Main, changes its course abruptly from south to west. The territory consists of a fertile tract of low hills, rising towards the south-west into the northern extremity of the Hardt range, but at no point reaching a height of more than 1050 ft.

The area and population of the three provinces of Hesse are as follow:

The chief towns of the grand duchy are Darmstadt and Offenbach in Starkenburg, Mainz and Worms in Rheinhessen and Giessen in Oberhessen. More than two-thirds of the inhabitants are Protestants; the majority of the remainder are Roman Catholics, and there are about 25,000 Jews. The grand duke is head of the Protestant church. Education is compulsory, the elementary schools being communal, assisted by state grants. There are a university at Giessen and a technical high school at Darmstadt. Agriculture is important, more than three-fifths of the total area being under cultivation. The largest grain crops are rye and barley, and nearly 40,000 acres are under vines. Minerals, in which Oberhessen is much richer than the two other provinces, include iron, manganese, salt and some coal.

The constitution dates from 1820, but was modified in 1856, 1862, 1872 and 1900. There are two legislative chambers. The upper consists of princes of the grand-ducal family, heads of mediatized houses, the head of the Roman Catholic and the superintendent of the Protestant church, the chancellor of the university, two elected representatives of the land-owning nobility, and twelve members nominated by the grand duke. The lower chamber consists of ten deputies from large towns and forty from small towns and rural districts. They are indirectly elected, by deputy electors nominated by the electors, who must be Hessians over twenty-five years old, paying direct taxes. The executive ministry of state is divided into the departments of the interior, justice and finance. The three provinces are divided for local administration into 18 circles and 989 communes. The ordinary revenue and expenditure amount each to about ?4,000,000 annually, the chief taxes being an income-tax, succession duties and stamp tax. The public debt, practically the whole of which is on railways, amounted to ?19,097,468 in 1907.

HESSE-CASSEL , now the government district of Cassel in the Prussian province of Hesse-Nassau. It was till 1866 a landgraviate and electorate of Germany, consisting of several detached masses of territory, to the N.E. of Frankfort-on-the-Main. It contained a superficial area of 3699 sq. m., and its population in 1864 was 745,063.

The regent, without his father's coarseness, had a full share of his arbitrary and avaricious temper. Constitutional restrictions were intolerable to him; and the consequent friction with the diet was aggravated when, in 1832, Hassenpflug was placed at the head of the administration. The whole efforts of the elector and his minister were directed to nullifying the constitutional control vested in the diet; and the Opposition was fought by manipulating the elections, packing the judicial bench, and a vexatious and petty persecution of political "suspects," and this policy continued after the retirement of Hassenpflug in 1837. The situation that resulted issued in the revolutionary year 1848 in a general manifestation of public discontent; and Frederick William, who had become elector on his father's death , was forced to dismiss his reactionary ministry and to agree to a comprehensive programme of democratic reform. This, however, was but short-lived. After the breakdown of the Frankfort National Parliament, Frederick William joined the Prussian Northern Union, and deputies from Hesse-Cassel were sent to the Erfurt parliament. But as Austria recovered strength, the elector's policy changed. On the 23rd of February 1850 Hassenpflug was again placed at the head of the administration and threw himself with renewed zeal into the struggle against the constitution and into opposition to Prussia. On the 2nd of September the diet was dissolved; the taxes were continued by electoral ordinance; and the country was placed under martial law. It was at once clear, however, that the elector could not depend on his officers or troops, who remained faithful to their oath to the constitution. Hassenpflug persuaded the elector to leave Cassel secretly with him, and on the 15th of October appealed for aid to the reconstituted federal diet, which willingly passed a decree of "intervention." On the 1st of November an Austrian and Bavarian force marched into the electorate.

HESSE-NASSAU , a province of Prussia, bounded, from N. to E., S. and W., successively by Westphalia, Waldeck, Hanover, the province of Saxony, the Thuringian States, Bavaria, Hesse and the Rhine Province. There are small detached portions in Waldeck, Thuringia, &c.; on the other hand the province enclaves the province of Oberhessen belonging to the grand-duchy of Hesse, and the circle of Wetzlar belonging to the Rhine Province. Hesse-Nassau was formed in 1867-1868 out of the territories which accrued to Prussia after the war of 1866, namely, the landgraviate of Hesse-Cassel and the duchy of Nassau, in addition to the greater part of the territory of Frankfort-on-Main, parts of the grand-duchy of Hesse, the territory of Homburg and the countship of Hesse-Homburg, together with certain small districts which belonged to Bavaria. It is now divided into the governments of Cassel and Wiesbaden, the second of which consists mainly of the former territory of Nassau .

The province has an area of 6062 sq. m., and had a population in 1905 of 2,070,052, being the fourth most densely populated province in Prussia, after Berlin, the Rhine Province and Westphalia. The east and north parts lie in the basin of the river Fulda, which near the north-eastern boundary joins with the Werra to form the Weser. The Main forms part of the southern boundary, and the Rhine the south-western; the western part of the province lies mostly in the basin of the Lahn, a tributary of the Rhine. The province is generally hilly, the highest hills occurring in the east and west. The Fulda rises in the Wasserkuppe , an eminence of the Rh?ngebirge, the highest in the province. In the south-west are the Taunus, bordering the Main, and the Westerwald, west of the Lahn, in which the highest points respectively are the Grosser Feldberg and the Fuchskauten . The congeries of small groups of lower hills in the north are known as the Hessische Bergland.

The province is not notably well suited to agriculture, but in forests it is the richest in Prussia, and the timber trade is large. The chief trees are beech, oak and conifers. Cattle-breeding is extensively practised. The vine is cultivated chiefly on the slopes of the Taunus, in the south-west, where the names of several towns are well known for their wines--Schierstein, Erbach , Johannisberg, Geisenheim, R?desheim, Assmannshausen. Iron, coal, copper and manganese are mined. The mineral springs are important, including those at Wiesbaden, Homburg, Langenschwalbach, Nenndorf, Schlangenbad and Soden. The chief manufacturing centres are Cassel, Diez, Eschwege, Frankfort, Fulda, Gross Almerode, Hanau and Hersfeld. The province is divided for administration into 42 circles , 24 in the government of Cassel and 18 in that of Wiesbaden. It returns 14 representatives to the Reichstag. Marburg is the seat of a university.

HESSE-ROTENBURG, a German landgraviate which was broken up in 1834. In 1627 Ernest , a younger son of Maurice, landgrave of Hesse-Cassel , received Rheinsfels and lower Katzenelnbogen as his inheritance, and some years later, on the deaths of two of his brothers, he added Eschwege, Rotenburg, Wanfried and other districts to his possessions. Ernest, who was a convert to the Roman Catholic Church, was a great traveller and a voluminous writer. About 1700 his two sons, William and Charles , divided their territories, and founded the families of Hesse-Rotenburg and Hesse-Wanfried. The latter family died out in 1755, when William's grandson, Constantine , reunited the lands except Rheinfels, which had been acquired by Hesse-Cassel in 1735, and ruled them as landgrave of Hesse-Rotenburg. At the peace of Lun?ville in 1801 the part of the landgraviate on the left bank of the Rhine was surrendered to France, and in 1815 other parts were ceded to Prussia, the landgrave Victor Amadeus being compensated by the abbey of Corvey and the Silesian duchy of Ratibor. Victor was the last male member of his family, so, with the consent of Prussia, he bequeathed his allodial estates to his nephews the princes Victor and Chlodwig of Hohenlohe-Waldenburg-Schillingsf?rst . When the landgrave died on the 12th of November 1834 the remaining parts of Hesse-Rotenburg were united with Hesse-Cassel according to the arrangement of 1627. It may be noted that Hesse-Rotenburg was never completely independent of Hesse-Cassel. Perhaps the most celebrated member of this family was Charles Constantine , a younger son of the landgrave Constantine, who was called "citoyen Hesse," and who took part in the French Revolution.

HESSIAN, the name of a jute fabric made as a plain cloth, in various degrees of fineness, width and quality. The common, or standard, hessian is 40 in. wide, weighs 10 1/2 oz. per yd., and in the finished state contains about 12 threads and 12 1/2 picks per in. The name is probably of German origin, and the fabric was originally made from flax and tow. Small quantities of cloth are still made from yarns of these fibres, but the jute fibre, owing to its comparative cheapness, has now almost supplanted all others.

This useful cloth is employed in countless ways, especially for packing all kinds of dry goods, while large quantities, of different qualities, are made up into bags for sugar, flour, coffee, grain, ore, manure, sand, potatoes, onions, &c. Indeed, bags made from one or other quality of this cloth, or from sacking, bagging or tarpaulin, form the most convenient, and at the same time the cheapest covering for any kind of goods which are not damaged by being crushed.

Certain types are specially treated, dyed black, tan or other colour, or left in their natural colour, stiffened and used for paddings and linings for cheap clothing, boots, shoes, bags and other articles. When dyed in art shades the cloth forms an attractive decoration for stages and platforms, and generally for any temporary erection, and in many cases it is stencilled and then used for wall decoration.

The great linoleum industry depends upon certain types of this fabric for the foundation of its products, while large quantities are used for the backs of fringe rugs, spring mattresses and the upholstery of furniture.

The great centres for the manufacture of this fabric are Dundee and Calcutta, and every variety of the cloth, and all kinds of hand- and machine-sewn, as well as seamless bags, are made in the former city. The American name for hessian is burlap; this particular kind is 40 in. wide, and is now largely made in Calcutta as well as in Dundee and other places.

HESYCHASTS , a quietistic sect which arose, during the later period of the Byzantine empire, among the monks of the Greek church, especially at Mount Athos, then at the height of its fame and influence under the reign of Andronicus the younger and the abbacy of Symeon. Owing to various adventitious circumstances the sect came into great prominence politically and ecclesiastically for a few years about the middle of the 14th century. Their opinion and practice will be best represented in the words of one of their early teachers : "When thou art alone in thy cell shut thy door, and seat thyself in a corner; raise thy mind above all things vain and transitory; recline thy beard and chin on thy breast; turn thine eyes and thy thought towards the middle of thy belly, the region of the navel ; and search the place of the heart, the seat of the soul. At first all will be dark and comfortless; but if thou persevere day and night, thou wilt feel an ineffable joy; and no sooner has the soul discovered the place of the heart than it is involved in a mystic and ethereal light." About the year 1337 this hesychasm, which is obviously related to certain well-known forms of Oriental mysticism, attracted the attention of the learned and versatile Barlaam, a Calabrian monk, who at that time held the office of abbot in the Basilian monastery of St Saviour's in Constantinople, and who had visited the fraternities of Mount Athos on a tour of inspection. Amid much that he disapproved, what he specially took exception to as heretical and blasphemous was the doctrine entertained as to the nature of this divine light, the fruition of which was the supposed reward of hesychastic contemplation. It was maintained to be the pure and perfect essence of God Himself, that eternal light which had been manifested to the disciples on Mount Tabor at the transfiguration. This Barlaam held to be polytheistic, inasmuch as it postulated two eternal substances, a visible and an invisible God. On the hesychastic side the controversy was taken up by Gregory Palamas, afterwards archbishop of Thessalonica, who laboured to establish a distinction between eternal and eternal . In 1341 the dispute came before a synod held at Constantinople and presided over by the emperor Andronicus; the assembly, influenced by the veneration in which the writings of the pseudo-Dionysius were held in the Eastern Church, overawed Barlaam, who recanted and returned to Calabria, afterwards becoming bishop of Hierace in the Latin communion. One of his friends, Gregory Acindynus, continued the controversy, and three other synods on the subject were held, at the second of which the Barlaamites gained a brief victory. But in 1351 under the presidency of the emperor John Cantacuzenus, the uncreated light of Mount Tabor was established as an article of faith for the Greeks, who ever since have been ready to recognize it as an additional ground of separation from the Roman Church. The contemporary historians Cantacuzenus and Nicephorus Gregoras deal very copiously with this subject, taking the Hesychast and Barlaamite sides respectively. It may be mentioned that in the time of Justinian the word hesychast was applied to monks in general simply as descriptive of the quiet and contemplative character of their pursuits.

Share on: WhatsApp @Hash Facebook Tweet