Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 27.djvu/18

 Court to Lisbon after the earthquake, and made a drawing of the city in its ruins. In 1759 he was chaplain of the Lenox and secretary to Rear-admiral Cornish. While he was on the coast of Coromandel he was present at the sieges of Pondicherry and Vellore. On 6 June 1761 he made an accurate observation of the transit of Venus over the sun at the Government House at Madras, in company with the governor, afterwards Lord Pigot, of which he gave an account in the ‘Philosophical Transactions’ (vol. lii. pt. i. pp. 396–8). In March 1762 he was appointed chaplain to the factory at Calcutta by the favour of [q. v.], then governor of Bengal, and in November of that year sent to the Royal Society an ‘account of an earthquake in the East Indies, of two eclipses of the sun and moon,’ observed at Calcutta (ib. liii. 256–62). In December 1764 he returned to England with Vansittart in H.M.S. Medway. On the voyage Hirst took a view of the Cape of Good Hope, which was engraved in 1766 by Peter Charles Canot. At the second transit of Venus on 3 June 1769, Hirst, attended by Vansittart, acted as one of the assistants to the astronomer-royal, Nevil Maskelyne, at Greenwich. At Maskelyne's request he drew up a particular ‘Account of several phenomena observed during the ingress of Venus into the Solar Disc,’ accompanied by capital diagrams (ib. lix. 228–35; also Gent. Mag. xl. 402). He had now taken chambers in Fig Tree Court, Inner Temple. Though in comfortable circumstances, his old friendship induced him to accompany Vansittart, sent out as one of three commissioners by the East India Company in 1769. Hirst was chaplain to the commission, and [q. v.] was purser. A Latin ode, ‘Ad Amicum Navigaturum,’ addressed to Hirst on the occasion by James Kirkpatrick, M.D., is printed in the ‘Gentleman's Magazine’ (xxxix. 550). The frigate, after leaving the Cape of Good Hope on 27 Dec. 1769, was never again heard of. Hirst's interesting letters to John Duncombe and William Fazakerley are printed in Duncombe's collection of ‘Letters by Several Eminent Persons deceased,’ 2nd edit. 1773 (iii. 84, 94, 142, 154, 159); another addressed to Emanuel Mendes da Costa in 1765 is Addit. MS. 28538, f. 158.

 HISLOP, JAMES (1798–1827), Scottish poet. [See ]

 HISLOP, STEPHEN (1817–1863), missionary and naturalist, born at Duns, Berwickshire, 8 Sept. 1817, was the youngest child of Stephen Hislop, a mason and elder of the Relief church, by his wife, Margaret Thomson. Young Stephen was educated at the parish school of Duns, and while still a boy gave much of his time to insect-hunting or fossil-collecting. From 1834 to 1838 Hislop studied in the arts faculty at Edinburgh University, and afterwards spent a year at Glasgow, but returned to Edinburgh to study divinity under Thomas Chalmers. During these years he supported himself by acting as a tutor in the summer, and kept up his keen interest in nature. Hislop had joined the established church, but took part in the secession in 1843. He was attracted to mission work by acting as secretary to a Ladies' Society for Female Education in India, and in January 1844 was accepted by the foreign missions of the Free church as a missionary for India. He was soon afterwards licensed to preach by the free presbytery of Edinburgh. In November 1844 he sailed for Bombay, accompanied by his wife, Erasma Hull, granddaughter of George Whitefield's friend. Hislop was assigned to Nagpoor, and settled at Sitabaldi, a mile and a half west of that city, on 13 Feb. 1845; his first year was spent in studying the native languages, but in May 1846 he opened a school at Nagpoor, which has grown into the present Hislop College. Except for a thirteen months' change, to take charge of the mission at Madras in 1850, Hislop's first twelve years in India were passed in active mission and educational work, combined with studies in botany and geology. He acquired considerable influence with the natives, and a warning conveyed to Hislop by a Mahommedan friend in July 1857 was the means of saving the Europeans at Nagpoor during the mutiny. At the end of 1858 he returned to England for a rest of two years; he occupied himself in establishing mission agencies, and for a time was in charge of Craig or Ferryden in Forfarshire. At the meeting of the British Association in September 1859 he read a paper on the Gonds. In January 1861 Hislop was again at Nagpoor. Previously he had not much concerned himself with the political administration of the country, except to protest against any official recognition of heathen customs; but the province had suffered much from weak administration, and Hislop now set himself to expose the scandal and bring about a reform through the medium of letters to the ‘Friend of India’ newspaper. Earl Canning was at last induced to organise the central provinces as a single government, and to appoint Sir Richard Temple as chief commissioner. The new governor freely consulted Hislop on schools, civil reforms, and