Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 11.djvu/859

Rh original genius. In 1825 he succeeded Fuseli as keeper of the Academy ; and he died in London on 30th December 1839, a widower without children. Some of his best pictures remained on his hands at his decease, such as the Angel releasing Peter from Prison (life-size), painted in 1831, Una with the Lion entering Curceca s Cave (1832), the Murder of the Innocents, his last exhibited work (1838), Comus, and Amphitrite. The National Gallery now con tains Edith finding the Body of Harold (1834), Cupid Dis armed, Piebecca and Abraham s Servant (1829), and Sir Calepine rescuing Serena (from the Faerie Queen) (1831). Hilton s excellence as an artist is relative to the state of art in his country at the time. In a great school or period hs could certainly not count as more than a respectable sub ordinate ; but in the British school of the earlier part of this century he had sufficient elevation of aim and width of attainment to stand conspicuous and praiseworthy, and, comparatively speaking, above the level of mediocrity.  HILVERSUM, a village and commune in the Netherlands in the province of North Holland, about equally distant from Amsterdam, Utrecht, and Amersfoort, with all of which it is connected by railway. The village is well sheltered on the west and north-west by a range of hills, and since 1874 it has been the seat of a hospital, the Trompenberg, for convalescents. The public buildings comprise a town-house and four churches and a synagogue, and there is a very handsome railway station. The weaving of floor-cloths, horse blankets, and Hilversum stripe is the principal industry. In Hilversum was separated from Laren. In it suffered at the hands of the people of Guelderland, in 1629 from the Croats, and in 1672 from the French. The of the village in 1840 was 5160, and in 1870 5611; while that of the commune in the same years was 5314 and 6615. Of this last number 3463 were Roman Catholics, 2327 belonged to the Dutch Reformed Church, and 236 were Jews.    

    IMALAYA is the name given to the mountains which form the northern boundary of British India, between the 75th and 95th meridians east of Greenwich. The word io-nifi- is Sanskrit, and literally signifies &quot;snow-abode,&quot; f rom him, ation of snow, and dldyd, abode, and is well translated &quot; snowy- aiue. range, though that expression is perhaps more nearly the equivalent of Jlimdchdl, another Sanskrit word, derived from him, snow, and dchut,, mountain, which is practically synonymous with Himalaya, and probably as often used in conversation by natives of northern India. The letter y in the last syllable of Himalaya is purely a consonant, and the last two syllables should be pronounced Id-ya, the con version of the ay into a diphthong being quite erroneous. The name, by transformations such as are common to all times and nations in the use of foreign words, was converted by the ancient Greeks into Emodos and Imaos.

Although the term Himalaya is applied by the natives of India only to the ranges which they see covered with perpetual snow, it has been long used by European geographers to designate the whole mountain region for which the Indian has no other name than pd/tdr, i.e., &quot;the mountains,&quot; of which the snowy ranges constitute but a small portion. The first mere cursory examination of these mountains by the older geographers rightly convinced them of the general physical unity of the mountainous region to the north of India, which in length extends from about 72 to 95 E. long., that is, between the rivers Indus and Brahmaputra, and in breadth includes the ranges between the plains of Hindustan and the upper parts of the main branches of these two great rivers. To these ranges the designation of Himalaya has by degrees been specially attached; and there is a certain convenience in still re stricting the name to that part of the mountains which is accessible from British India, for this is the practical sig nification of it now commonly accepted. Though it is to the area thus limited that the present article is mainly designed to refer, it will be necessary, for the correct apprehension of some of its main characteristics, to understand aright the relation whi^h the Himalaya bears to the great mountain region beyond it, and a general description of that region thus becomes requisite.

Scientific investigation has clearly shown that, so far as the main characteristics of the mountains are concerned, the natural boundaries of the Himalayan system must be carried much farther than had at first been recognized. Considerable obscurity still involves the eastern portion of these mountains, and there is great want of precise knowledge as to their connexion with the ranges of western China, from which are thrown off the great rivers of China, Siam, and Burmah. On the west, however, it has been com pletely established that a continuous chain extends beyond the Indus along the north of the Oxus, and ends in that quarter about 68 E. long. In like manner it is found that no separation can be established, except a purely arbitrary one, between the Himalaya as commonly defined and the greatly elevated and rugged table-land of Tibet; nor between this last and the mountain ranges which form its northern border along the low-lying desert regions of Central Asia.

It thus appears that the Himalaya, with its prolongation west of the Indus, constitutes in reality the broad mountainous slope which descends from the southern border of the great Tibetan table-land to the lower levels of Hindustan and the plains of the Caspian ; and that a somewhat similar mountain face, descending from the northern edge of the table-land, leads to another great plain on the north, extending far to the eastward, to the northern borders of China. Towards its north-west extremity this great system is connected with other mountains, on the south, with those of Afghanistan, of which the Hindu-Rush is the crest, occupying a breadth of about 250 miles between Peshawur and Kunduz ; and on the north, with the mountains that flank the Jaxartes or Sir on the north, and the Thian-shan or Celestial Mountains. The eastern margin of Tibet descends to western China, and the south-eastern termination of the Himalaya is fused into the ranges which run north and south between the 95th and 100th meridians, and separate the rivers of Burmah, Siam, and western China.

Nor can any of the numerous mountain ranges which constitute this great elevated region be properly regarded as having special, definite, or separate existence apart from the general mass of which they are the component parts ; and Tibet cannot be rightly described, as it has been, as lying in the interval between the two so-called chains of the Himalaya and the Koueulun or Kara Koram. It is in truth the summit of a great protuberance above the general level of the earth s surface, of which these alleged chains are nothing more than the south and north borders, while the other ranges which traverse it are but corrugations of the mass more or less strongly marked and locally developed.

The average level of the Tibetan table-land may be taken at about 15,000 feet above the sea. The loftiest points known on the earth s surface are to be found along its southern or Himalayan boundary ; one of them falls very little short of 30,000 feet in elevation, and peaks of 20,000 &quot; 