The Nuttall Encyclopaedia Part 243

HIGHGATE, a noted suburb of London, 5 m. N. of the General Post-Office; the burial-place of Coleridge, George Eliot, and Faraday.

d.i.c.k Whittington's Stone is at the foot of Highgate Hill.

HILARION, ST., founder of monachism in Palestine; was a convert of St. Anthony, and of great repute for sanct.i.ty (291-372). Festival, Oct.

21.

HILARY, ST., bishop of Poitiers, of which he was a native; distinguished himself by his zeal against the Arians; his writings valuable in connection with that controversy; _d_. 367. Festival, Jan.

13.

HILDEBRAND. See GREGORY VII.

HILDESHEIM (33), a town in Hanover, Prussia, on the Innerste, 24 m.

SE. of Hanover; is a quaint old town, and has several ancient churches, notably a n.o.ble cathedral of the 11th century, with famous bronze gates; trades in corn, linen, &c.

HILL, REV. ROWLAND, a popular but eccentric preacher, born in Hawkeston, the son of a baronet, came under the influence of Whitfield and the Methodist movement, and while yet an undergraduate became an itinerant preacher; he took orders in 1774; but continued his open-air preaching till 1783, when he established himself in London, starting an unlicensed place of wors.h.i.+p, although still remaining a communicant of the Church of England; he originated the first Sunday School in London, and was the author of several religious works, including a volume of hymns (1744-1833).

HILL, SIR ROWLAND, originator of the penny postage, born at Kidderminster; commenced life as a teacher and educationist; interested himself in the colonisation of South Australia, and held a post in connection with it; published in 1837 his pamphlet, "Post-Office Reforms," and saw his scheme of uniform postage rate adopted three years after, though not till 1354 did he become secretary to the Postmaster-General or have full power and opportunity to carry his views out (1795-1879).

HILL, VISCOUNT, British general, born in Shrops.h.i.+re; entered the army at fifteen, served under Sir John Moore, and under the Duke of Wellington in the Peninsula and at Waterloo, where he commanded a division; succeeded Wellington in 1828 as commander-in-chief (1772-1842).

HILLEL, an eminent and influential Jewish Rabbi, born in Babylon about 112 B.C.; devoted his life to the study of the Jewish law, formed a digest of it, and founded a school; was a good and wise man and teacher; died at a great age, 120 years old it is said.

HIMALAYAS ("the abode of snow"), a stupendous mountain chain stretching 1500 m. along the northern frontier of India, and dividing that country from Thibet; forty-five of its peaks attain a greater height than those of any other mountain system in the world; Mount Everest, the loftiest, reaches 29,002 ft.; the best-known pa.s.s is the _Karakoram Pa.s.s_ (18,550 ft.), leading into Eastern Turkestan; there are few lakes, but amid the snowy heights rise the rivers Ganges, Indus, Brahmaputra, &c.; gold, iron, copper, and lead are wrought.

HINCKLEY (10), a nicely built town of Leicesters.h.i.+re, 13 m. W. of Leicester; has an interesting old parish church of Edward III.'s time; does a good trade in hosiery, baskets, boots, &c.

HINC'MAR, a famous Frankish churchman; was appointed archbishop of Rheims, in which capacity he maintained an independent att.i.tude towards the Papal See, and distinguished himself as a champion of ecclesiastical liberty (806-882).

HIND, JOHN RUSSELL, an eminent astronomer, born at Nottingham; at 17 he obtained a post in the Greenwich Observatory; subsequently became observer in Mr. Bishop's private observatory, Regent's Park, where his untiring a.s.siduity was rewarded by the discovery of several new movable stars and 10 minor planets; he received various honours from societies; was President of the Royal Astronomical Society, and in 1852 was pensioned by Government; his works include "The Comets," "The Solar System," &c. (1823-1895).

HINDLEY (19), a busy manufacturing town in Lancas.h.i.+re, 3 m. SE. of Wigan; the staple industry is the manufacture of cotton; in the vicinity are large coal-mines.

HINDU KUSH, a lofty mountain range stretching 365 m. from the western extremity of the Himalayas, from which it is cut off by the valley of the Indus into Afghanistan, which it divides from Turkestan; it attains an elevation of 23,000 ft.; is crossed by several pa.s.ses, and is rich in minerals, especially iron; the tribes that inhabit it are chiefly s.h.i.+ns and Dards.

HINDUISM, the name given to certain forms of religion among the Hindus, the characteristics of which are the wors.h.i.+p of divinities exalted above the rest, and the highly concrete and intensely personal conception of these, which comes out in sundry accounts respecting them of a biographical nature which divinities are identified either with civa or Vishnu, and their religions called civaite or Vishnuite, while their respective followers are styled caivas or Vishnavas.

HINDUSTAN, a name sometimes loosely applied to the entire Indian peninsula, but which, strictly speaking, embraces only the country of the upper valley of the Ganges, divided into NW. Provinces, Oude, and Behar; the language spoken is Hindi, a pure Sanskritic tongue, on which Hindustani is based, but with large Persian and Arabic admixtures.

HINDUSTANI, the official and common language of India.

HINTON, JAMES, aurist and metaphysician, born at Reading; after taking his degree was for some time at sea and in Jamaica, but in 1850 established himself in London; specialising in ear-diseases he rose to the top of his profession, becoming lecturer at Guy's Hospital; his leisure was earnestly devoted to philosophy, and gave fruit in "Man and his Dwelling-Place," "The Mystery of Pain," "Philosophy and Religion,"

&c. (1822-1875).

HIOUEN-THSANG, a Chinese Buddhist, who in the 7th century traversed India collecting books bearing upon the creed and law of Buddhism, and spent his time after his return in translating them.

HIPPARCHUS, ancient astronomer, born at Nicaea; flourished in the 2nd century B.C.; discovered among other things the precession of the equinoxes, determined the place of the equinox, and catalogued 1000 fixed stars.

HIPPIAS, tyrant of Athens, son of Pisistratus; expelled from Athens, applied to the Persians to reinstate him, and kindled the first Persian War with Greece; fell at Marathon, 490 B.C.

HIPPOCRATES, the father of medicine, born at Cos, 460 B.C.; was a contemporary of Socrates and Plato; was of wide-spread renown as a physician; settled in Thessaly and died at Larissa advanced in years; no fewer than 60 writings are ascribed to him, but only a few are genuine.

HIPPOCRENE (lit. the fountain of the horse), a fountain on Mount Helicon, in Boeotia, sacred to the Muses, and said to have been caused by PEGASUS (q. v.) striking the spot with his hoof.

HIPPODAMI'A, in the legendary lore of Greece, was the beautiful daughter of Oenomaus, king of Pisa, in Elis, and the pleiad Sterope; the oracle had foretold death to Oenomaus on the occasion of his daughter's marriage, to prevent which the king had made it a condition that each suitor should run a chariot race with him, and that, if defeated, should be put to death; many had perished in the attempt to beat the king, till Pelops, by bribing Oenomaus's charioteer, won the race; the king in a frenzy killed himself, and the kingdom and the fair Hippodamia pa.s.sed to Pelops.

HIPPOLYTe, queen of the Amazons, slain by Hercules in order to obtain and carry off her magic girdle.

HIPPOLYTUS, ST., bishop of Portus, near Rome; lived in the 3rd century B.C.; a lost work of his, "A Refutation of all the Heresies,"

was discovered at Mount Athos in 1842, his authors.h.i.+p of which Bunsen vindicated in "Hippolytus and his Age."

HISPANIA, the ancient name of Spain and Portugal among the Latins.

HISSAR, 1, a district (776) in the Punjab, India; for the most part sandy, yet in rainy years produces good crops of rice, barley, &c., and is noted for its white cattle; the capital (14), bearing the same name, is situated on the Western Jumna Ca.n.a.l, 102 m. W. of Delhi. 2, Also a district in Central Asia, a dependency of the Khan of Bokhara lying N. of the Oxus River, and separated from Bokhara by a branch of the Thian Shan Mountains; has a fertile soil, and exports corn, sheep, &c., to Bokhara.

HISTOLOGY, the science of tissues, vegetable and animal.

HITCHc.o.c.k, EDWARD, American geologist, born in Ma.s.sachusetts; reported on the geology of his native State, and on the agricultural schools of Europe; wrote "Elementary Geology" and the "Religion of Geology" (1793-1864).